The book’s opening – in which we meet Lydia and her son Luca, cowering in the bathtub of her mother’s bathroom as sixteen members of their family are gunned down outside – sets both the tone and the pace for the rest of American Dirt, a book that I read with a sense of looming horror and despair over two single sittings. Alas, I accidentally left said book in the airport, and so started American Dirt shortly after take off. I was lent a copy by my friend Jane, who owns Gertrude & Alice both her and her daughter Kate had read it, and I took it with me to Byron Bay over Australia Day weekend, with plans to start it if – and when – I finished the book I was reading at the time. But to begin with, I was swept up in such a state of sadness that I couldn’t quite find the words I needed to write about it as eloquently as I would have liked, and then I found myself down something of a Google rabbit hole as I read, watched and listened to all the controversy surrounding it something I will touch on later in this review. I had planned to write my review of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins the day after I finished it.
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