The Children's Crusade

The Children's Crusade by Rebecca Brown is a short, quiet novel following an unnamed girl through five stages of her parents' divorce and the loss of her brother Sten. It's a difficult read — not because it's long, but because Brown explains almost nothing, leaving you to piece things together yourself. The writing is spare and sometimes hypnotic, and the final image of the girl writing a letter to her absent brother while already vowing never to let her own future children tear her apart is genuinely sad and stays with you. It's a thoughtful, honest little book, but it keeps you at a distance the whole time — and its meaning only really settles after you've sat with it a while.

This one flummoxed me. I *loved* the political metaphor of spy-diplomat between parental camps, His Highness and Her Honor. But what was *really* going on after that? Thwoop, right over my head. (I know why it's on GLBT lists. It's the main plot that eludes me.)