The Cutmouth Lady

The Cutmouth Lady captures some of the most essential features of teenage life — the awkward romances, the sampling of identities, and the excitement and disillusionment of growing independence — in startlingly perceptive ways. Roby Ashby’s prose often has graceless phrasing (“In the wet mist of early morning, there materialized a woman over by the boat rental house”) but this is a solid book on adolescent angst.