![]() It’s natural, in a way, that the narrator should turn to an engine and its manual for solace: she occasionally works, alongside her violent and abusive stepfather (to whom she refers as ‘father man’ across the book), in the unlicensed garage he has set up on the same block as the house. When you put your mind in the engine some of what your body is saying – about being too hot, wanting a drink, needing to cry – can be turned down for a while. It’s a moment of stillness, but also, briefly, of possibility – ‘She could always change her mind,’ the narrator says, ‘Maybe there is someplace else for us to go?’ And as the moment stretches, tautens, becomes unbearable, the narrator escapes by imagining lifting the bonnet of the car, and beginning to disassemble its engine: ![]() ![]() There’s a point in Carrie Tiffany’s new novel, Exploded View, where the teenage narrator sits in a parked car with her mother and brother, parked in front of their ‘mission brown’ suburban house, all three people unmoving, waiting, tense. ![]()
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