There is something both dark and bright in Tiffany McDaniel’s world that is in some way reminiscent of Heather O’Neill. A kind of darkness on which the author just needs to point her pencil to make it shine brightly.
From Bettyawarded by Quebec booksellers in 2021, then The summer when everything melted and now with this dazzling third novel, the young American has established herself in our repertoire among the pens that count because she knows how to take a lucid look at human nature and draw us into powerful whirlwinds of emotions. Because the one who grew up in Ohio continues to draw inspiration from her corner of the country to construct social tragedies which reflect on a small scale evils of a much more considerable scale.
On the wild side is dedicated to the six victims of Chillicothe, a small town in Ohio where women were reported missing or whose bodies were found near the river in 2014 and 2015. Women whose deaths did not make the subject to in-depth investigations because they were considered only drug addicts and prostitutes.
In this very feminine novel, Tiffany McDaniel pays tribute to them by showing, through characters inspired by their lives, that these women were once little girls who had dreams and were surrounded by people who loved them .
Its heroines, Arc and Daffy, are twins with eyes like “witches’ marbles” who live with their mother and aunt, both addicted to heroin and who pay for their doses with their bodies. The world in which Arc and Daffy grow up is populated by monsters with human traits and predators who break little girls. During their childhood, their “grandma Milkweed” taught them to turn the wild side of things in order to see the beauty. But after her death, they are left to their sad fate.
Throughout their short lives, these girls who we see become young adults will nevertheless try to find the beautiful side hidden behind the horror. With their friends, they will play at being the queens of Chillicothe. They will even try to escape and turn their backs on this hell that imprisons them. Then, one by one, they will disappear or end up in the river without the police lifting a finger to find the person responsible for their death.
On her blog, Tiffany McDaniel says that during her childhood she spent time with girls like Arc and Daffy, who came from homes very different from hers; so she grew up witnessing the ravages of drugs. By setting this masterful novel in the 1980s and 1990s, she shows us that the root of the social crises that make headlines today goes back much further than we think.
On the wild side
Gallmeister
707 pages