'Gun Love' by Jennifer Clement is about a young girl living in a car with her mother and what family can mean.

Pearl France lives in a broken down car with her mother Margot. That means they get by eating what they can and being at the mercy of those who prey on the unfortunate. Pastor Rex, in the nearby trailer park, has a 'Guns for God' programme. That brings a man named Eli around who visits Pearl's mother in the back seat of their car. When Eli brings a gun around, Pearl's world is upended.

It's a rough existence and a look into a world that most of us don't want to see. The prose is sometimes luminous, even in the face of some pretty big despair. There is definitely a character journey that Pearl takes, but it felt incomplete to me a little. That didn't stop me from liking this book, if one can be said to like such characters.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Crown Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Right from the start I was drawn into this book. The characters were very relatable and easy to like. You felt the story while you read it. I think the characters will stay with you long after you put the book down. If you're looking for a different kind of read that makes you feel and think, this is it!

Topical and unique, I’ll confidently recommend, especially to readers who appreciate a young narrator.

This is one of the best novels I've read this year, I can't describe why it struck such a chord with me but I couldn't put it down. Ms. Clement's lyrical prose held me spellbound.

Jennifer Clement is three for three for me. Gun Love is the third novel of hers that I've read and she hasn't lost her edge. Fourteen year old Pearl lives in a car with her mother at a trailer park. Guns und their way into their lives and Clement counters the violence with lyrical writing. Gun, running, random shootings and the murder of Selena all circle young Pearl and the peace she seeks.

Copy provided by the Publisher

Set in a trailer park in Florida, Pearl and her mother Margot make due while living in their broken down car. Pearl attends school and plays with her friend April May, while her mom works at the local VA hospital. All that changes when a man comes to stay with one of the residences. While some are fooled that Eli is in need of a hand, Eli is more of a handful than anyone predicted. He sweeps Margot further and further away from the life she was trying to build and Pearl finds herself more and more alone. Guns play a strong role in this story and the underbelly of Florida life. There's definitely a revenge aspect of this book I enjoyed, but I still wanted to know more about Pearl. To me her story wasn't finished.

I picked up Gun Love from NetGalley because it was mentioned on a few lists of anticipated new fiction in 2018. Ultimately I was disappointed in this book. Despite its (sadly) timely subject matter, I didn’t care for the characters and I found the writing too self-conscious.

The novel is about Pearl, who spends her first fifteen years living out of a car in a trailer park with her mother Margot. Margot got pregnant at a young age, had Pearl in secret, and left her wealthy but abusive family to raise her daughter on her own. Since Pearl has never known a different life, living in a car seems normal to her, as does not having a father or any other family. The trailer park is her neighborhood and its residents are her family.

Pearl is described as pale, even abino, with pure white hair. This, combined with her name, was one of the things I found overly self-conscious in the book. She’s also not a terribly nice person, but I can live with that in a fifteen-year-old. What was more problematic for me is that I just never had any real emotional connection to this book. Occasionally Clement helps the reader visualize what it’s like to grow up in a car, but often I just felt removed, at a distance. Although I did appreciate her commentary on the senselessness of life in Central Florida.

If you’re looking for realism or detail about Pearl’s life, you won’t find it in this book. Her mother is a romantic, a dreamer, and that’s how Pearl is raised and how she thinks. In the opening of the book we are set up to know that Margot’s boyfriend will cause Pearl’s world to come apart. He does, but not in the way I expected. Guns come into play because several of the trailer park residents are in fact running an underground gun business, including a pastor who claims his gun program is to get guns off the streets.

Sadly, it felt very timely to read this book about guns, when gun control is foremost on my mind. But Clement’s book didn’t offer any insights. I really disliked Margot, who seems to live in this dream world and does very little to give her daughter a decent life.

For a better read about a fatherless girl named Pearl, I recommend Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and Crown Publishing. The book publishes March 6, 2018.

A chilling view at the ridiculous gun culture that we have in the US.

With the exception of the first few weeks, Pearl has lived her entire life in a car. Her mother Margot was only a teenager, growing up in a home with a father who put her to sleep by having her sniff gas from the stove every night, when Pearl came into the world. Pearl was born albino, her father one of her mother's teachers (married with children, naturally), and having no other family, but unwilling to stay with her father, Margot took her then new car, and even newer baby, and ran away to Florida, taking up residence in a trailer park temporarily. "Temporarily" turned into Pearl's entire childhood as her mother's mental health issues prevented her from holding down a job. Despite all of this, Pearl was relatively happy, not knowing any different, and having a fierce attachment to her mother that was returned in kind. Until a new man moved into the trailer park and changed everything.

Jennifer Clement's Prayers for the Stolen was the first galley I ever reviewed. It was strange and startling and tremendous, a book I've never forgotten. When I heard Gun Love was coming out, it went on my Most Anticipated List and I waited impatiently to see if I'd be lucky enough to get a galley (I did!). And now that I've finished it, I'm still mulling over my feelings about it more than a week later.

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book. In the end, I can't make up my mind if it's more about guns or love or simple human resilience. Even into adolescence, Pearl is so accepting of her world, clings to it actually, and though it is hard to fathom, I imagine there are many real people, real children, living this way all over our country. And after all, that does tend to be what Jennifer Clement does, highlight the everyday of those who live in the underbelly, who go unnoticed and ignored. And while I have a hard time connecting all the dots, she definitely highlights several alternate realities here: the lives of the working poor, our terrible treatment of veterans, living with the constant fear of having your children taken because you don't have "enough" according to state standards, how the poor are criminalized rather than helped, and how prevalent guns (and violence!) are in our daily lives, perhaps without us even realizing it.

Given our current state of affairs, the subject matter is painfully relevant. The story itself moved too quickly for me in the last half, so much happening, so much craziness, and that is where I began to struggle with the end game of the story. I have so many questions! That said, a book that leaves me thinking and questioning is a book well worth reading. And the writing was lovely.

A solid 4 stars for me.

Who would've thought a bright yellow cover with hot pink alligator shadows would hold a tale about guns? Welp, Jennifer Clement pens a story of a resilient young girl growing up in contemporary America with its love of firearms.

Pearl lives in a car parked at the edge of a trailer park in the middle of Florida. It's the only home she knows. Just weeks after she was born, Pearl's mother ran away from home, taking with her valuables either for memories or to be sold when needed. But the most valuable thing she took is baby Pearl. Growing up in the front seat of a '94 Mercury with her mother living in the backseat was perfectly normal. Also normal was the sound of gunshots. Florida residents were the ultimate gun lovers. Some used guns to protect their family and others used guns to hunt alligators for sport. Again, Pearl knew no different.

Gun Love had the chance to be something so great. And maybe it is to some early readers. However, its greatness was lost on me. The beginning of the book was interesting. I'd never read about a character that basically didn't exist (no birth certificate, no identification, no home address, etc.) Nor had I read a book that mentioned guns like it was nothing. But when a third main character entered the picture, I was lost in the sauce of a lyrical writing style. The author was more concerned with writing metaphors and prose than developing the characters in a flowing story. It was a disappointing read.

Nevertheless, Happy Pub Day to Jennifer Clement! It is quite an accomplishment to publish a novel. Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean the next reader won't either. Gun Love is now available.

LiteraryMarie

Interesting but .... Florida has had a tough time in the last few years. The situation in this novel between Pearl and Margot reminded me of the film The Florida Project and if you liked this book, you should see that film. Bad things happen to good people. And bad people. I know others found the writing lyrical but I couldn't connect. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

The first half of this novel was somewhat compelling, then everything fell apart. I had to force myself to finish this one. I'm saddened to say that parts 2 and 3 ruined something that started off with a lot of promise.

intense, strong and also quirky too.I liked the way it had the two parts of the story... the before the voice and then the results of the after.

Currently the death flu is attempting to murder, but since I'm already dead inside it's having a rough go of it. I did want to take a time-out from my hacking my right lung out in order to put something up about this in case it is still available for request. If you’re like me, you try your darndest to steer clear of NetGalley because you already fear you will soon be appearing on A&E when your family stages an intervention for your addiction. It’s then you rely on people like My Better Half to tell you about not-to-miss items. In this case, she didn’t even get a chance to read the thing because I wanted it from the title alone. Not to mention the synopsis told me it was going to be about a girl who not only straight up lives in a car, but that said car is NEXT TO A TRAILER PARK(!!!!), in the great state of Florida where the local man of the cloth preaches on Sundays and runs guns the rest of the days of the week. I pretty much looked like a screaming fangirl before I even got approved and by the time I was finished I was like USA! USA! USA! Sorry, too much Olympic viewing the past few days.

I don’t really know what to say about this story. You’re dropped in on Pearl’s life for little more than a moment and yanked right back out again. There’s not much “before” to learn about and there’s certainly no epilogue detailing the after. The story is very much in the now and the viewpoint is completely Pearl’s. Gun Love earns its Stars for the same reason many will subtract them – the writing. You’re either going to love it or hate it and obviously I fall into the former category.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

Pearl has grown up living in a car that is parked at the beginning of a middle of nowhere Florida trailer park. She doesn't know much of anything about her mother's past life other than the fact that she knows her mom came from money..(and fly swatters and the gas stove) and that no one knows that Pearl exists. She has no birth certificate as her mom had her and ran. That keeps the child protection services away. Or so she hopes.

Pearl and her mom have lived in that car Pearl's whole life. They have made it and the trailer park their home. They take showers at the community restroom and eat things that don't need refrigeration. They have neighbors that look out after them.


You don't want to miss these characters...a mentally challenged woman with her Barbie dolls, a traumatized Vet, an Hispanic couple and the preacher. *yes please*

Pearl even has a best friend that she steals cigarettes for and they go to the dump and look for dead animals. Good times.

Then Eli comes to the trailer park.


Pearl's mother becomes a different type of woman with Eli and starts making Pearl leave the car when he is around and stops going to work.

This frigging author can write her butt off. I swear I actually tasted the Raid spray that Pearl's mother would spray down the car with nightly. She brings all these characters to life in your head and then when the bad stuff goes on..and you sorta knew bad stuff couldn't help but happen...you saw it through Pearl's voice and eyes. It sorta dimmed down the bad but in a way that still socked me over the head. I've not read anything quite like that experience. I would have given this the full five stars except for a few things...and I have been hating every dang book I read lately. So that's saying something. (Probably something stupid...but still)

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.

A child living a precarious life. A mother, who became a mother too soon, clinging to reality until a man sweeps her off her feet. A community of dysfunctional families living a meager existence. It simmers until it blows one day and all their lives will never be the same. Jennifer Clement has written a sad tale of what poverty looks like in this tale of unrequited love, violence and loss. Gun love is a unique novel, but it just doesn’t satisfy in the end.

There is a dusting of snow on the ground here and a chill in the air; but, I've just spent the past day in Florida thanks to Jennifer Clement and her lyrical novel. It's not the Disneyland and clean condo world of Florida, but the Florida that some of us may choose not to see: the trailer park by the garbage dump, the strip mall pastor, the runaway, the transient, Clement has a gift for imagery that allows the reader to become fully immersed in the setting. I was there. In the early morning hours, I heard the bullets of people using the river for target practice. In the tropical heat, I sat in the front seat of a '94 Mercury home, smelling Raid eating Cheerio's with powdered milk. I sat in a sticky cement church watching my neighbors and patients from the veterans hospital while listening to my mother play a used piano....A skilled fiction writer takes you there.
Clement has created a resilient child protagonist who is believable. Who is the observer of the world she inhabits as both a preteen and an adult. She has managed to create a young character who is both naïve and as wise as an adult who has seen too much (but also too little). She has created a world of off-the-grain characters through the eyes of the petite, near-albino Pearl. Readers are introduced to her tiny mother, as a woman Pearl described: " My mother is a cup of sugar. You could borrow her any time.."
Pearl and her mother live in a car. An out of commission car parked outside of a trailer park. The two are even out of the fray from the out-of-the-fray park inhabitants who look upon the family with pity, compassion, and some distance. Pearl's mother Margot was a teen mother who came from affluence and hid in plain sight where she knows people will not think to look for her. Living in the Mercury is all that Pearl has ever known.

This is not a overly optimistic story. This is not a overly tragic story. But it's the ambivalent nature of both. And I think that what makes it realistic. Pearl is a child who does what she needs to do, feels with some restraint. Pearl watches Margot give away her self like she gives away her family heirlooms. Objects in this novel are symbolic and props to the world the author has created. Guns are everywhere. Piles of guns and the boom of shots. Guns describe children and shape adults.
Despite this, it is a beautiful book and Clement has made it so.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the advanced copy of Gun Love in exchange for my honest review.

'My mother was right. In our part of Florida everything was puzzled. Life was always like shoes on the wrong foot.'

Gun Love is so well written I can still taste the toxic cockroach spray in my mouth. Living in a Mercury (car) with her young mother for most of her life, Pearl hasn’t known anything different from living with next to nothing, never having a father nor any other family. She knows her mother was from somewhere wildly fancier, with her inheritance kept in the trunk, fancy china, and such. Surrounded by a strange cast of characters in a trailer park, no one is as poverty striken as Pearl and her mother, the lowest of low in the park. “People were always shaking their heads at our lives.” Yet, there was something special about her beautiful mother, everyone loved her. When Pearl isn’t scavenging through the dump next to their home, which her mother warns her away from, with her best friend April May, she is filching cigarettes from their neighbors to feed their habit until one day as she is thieving in Pastor Rex’s trailer, she runs into a naked man, Eli. A man who may just weasel his way between she and her mother Margot.

Pearl’s mother is ‘fragile’, Margot feels and sees all the broken and hidden hurts and bruises of the soul in others. It’s both gift and curse, allowing damaged people in, giving them a moment of comfort from the hateful loudness of the world even if it’s just in the front seat of their car. Pearl knows her mother once had everything, others know she was a lady who came from wealth, culture. But something broke in her mother, and she had to run from the terror that was her childhood home. She is too good, and such easy prey for a con man. Working as a janitor at a veterans hospital, that too goes by the wayside as her mother seems to lose herself in Eli. It terrifies her to see her mother getting swallowed up all for a taste of Eli.

Falling asleep each night to gunshots in the air, usually men hunting gators or shooting at anything that moves, it isn’t long before her mother’s lover takes up all the space in the car with his visit, and she is forced to ‘get lost’ during their trysts. Each time she feels like she is in exile while her mother opens her body to the love of a bad man and she makes friends with other’s in the park, a mexican couple in particular, Ray and Corazón. Life in her corner of Florida seems to revolve around guns, for protection, for love, for revenge, or collection and everyone has their hands on one.

When tragedy strikes, she’s a lost satellite and trying to become normal, fostered to an alien world she could never get used to. She makes more connections, even finds love, something to dream of, an anchor that maybe her ‘someday’ future can afford her, but she knows right now she has to take a chance on the person who has come to rescue her from the broken ‘system.’ Love has to wait.

As horrifying as life in a car is to the rest of us, there is something tender between Margot and Pearl, a love purer than many mother daughter relationships in palatial homes and yet we know it’s not the right place for a child. Pearl is treated like an object, an unwanted parcel later in the novel, and the sad reality to me is that in many situations this fictional account isn’t so far-fetched. Without giving anything away, guns are as much a character as people and serve as both justice and injustice.

This is a unique story. I felt much more sorry for her when she was no longer living in the car, if you can imagine that. An interesting eye on people living outside the ‘norms’ of society. An original novel!

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Crown Publishing

Hogarth

I read this in one sitting. Sometimes it felt a little heavy handed on the poverty porn, but not a bad book.