Book Review : Patti Abbott - Concrete Angel (2015)

Order CONCRETE ANGEL here

When I was twelve, my mom shot a soda-pop salesman she's known less than eight hours.

It is my utmost sincere belief that everybody has a story to tell. Most times, it has to do with an ex-lover or an abusive family member the person has left behind. These are the best stories anyway, because everybody can relate to them one way or another. Ex-lovers and family are an important part of most normal people's lives. It's an important part of mine anyway, not I pretend to be normal by anybody's standards. It's why I liked Patti Abbott's debut novel CONCRETE ANGEL. Not only it has an original plot with visceral appeal, but it is told in an unconventional and almost confessional manner that will keep you enthralled in slower moments.

CONCRETE ANGEL is narrated by Christine, a young girl living an unstable life with her troubled mother. Eve should probably never have been a mother, but she uses that fact in order to get what she wants out of other people, especially men. Eve's needs are the priority She NEEDS to be a princess, have a lot of shiny things and have others bow down to her beauty. Christine is just collateral damage of her mother's endless quest for a situation that doesn't exist until Eve starts having other children with the many men in her lives. Now that she is not alone anymore suffering her mother, Christine has some choices to make.

When it first came out last summer, CONCRETE ANGEL received some criticism from trade publications. I'm happy that I've read the novel, because much of that criticism was unwarranted. It does have a murder right at the beginning (see quote above, it literally is the first sentence in the book), but I thought it was made clear from chapter two that the novel wasn't a mystery It's a psychological drama with crime elements. CONCRETE ANGEL is about Christine coming to terms with the stranglehold her mother has on her life. It's an intimate, almost impressionistic novel about a broken family and I thought it was pretty clear about its intention. Either you love the idea or you don't but it's not poorly written or anything. 

I've read CONCRETE ANGEL at a furious, unhealthy pace last week not because the story of Eve and Christine was particularly moving to me, but because of how Patti Abbott wrote it. The author has a command of first person narration that goes beyond technical mastery. Everything from the choice of the point of view to whatever detail Christine decides to reveal has been carefully thought of. Eve is by far the most seductive character in the novel, but since Abbott decided to pull a Gatsby and see her through someone else's eyes, her actions constantly have to be deciphered by both Christine and the reader and it makes CONCRETE ANGEL inherently mysterious. Patti Abbott nailed the feeling of being dependent of an unstable person. It makes life chaotic and unpredictable.

There ARE some pacing issues with CONCRETE ANGEL. Eve hops from a boyfriend to another throughout the novel and before she meets the last one Bud, it doesn't really feel like the situation is getting worse. It gets old after a while and I can understand that it would've turned some readers away if unlike me they didn't connect with the urgency of Christine's confession. The good clearly outweighs the bad in CONCRETE ANGEL though and I thought Patti Abbott created one of the most compelling first person narrators I've had the pleasure to read this year. Maybe the best since Rex in Richard Godwin's ONE LOST SUMMER. It's one of these novels that makes it so easy to turn the pages that it'll keep you under its spell past dinner and bed time.