by Gracie LaRue
I picked up Meghan Maclean Weir’s novel The Book of Essie when I first started working at Lemuria back in June. It had been about two weeks since I had finished reading my last novel, Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman, and I realized that while not reading a book for two weeks is considered normal in the outside world, it is absolutely unacceptable in the world of Lemurians. No one was judging me for my reading slump, but I grew exceedingly self-conscious around my coworkers who seemed to be reading a book every other night.
I finally chose The Book of Essie to break my non-reading streak, and I was determined to not give up on it. So when I was on a plane on my way to Turks and Caicos for a senior trip, finding myself about a third of the way into the novel and questioning whether or not I should continue, I felt defeated. Would I ever read another book again? I was debating sliding the book back into my carry on when I scanned the page I was on and saw a mention of the school I’ll be attending this fall: The University of the South, which is relatively small, so I took this random coincidence as a sign that the wind spirits wished me to continue in my endeavor, and I sure am glad that I listened to them.
The Book of Essie was a budding flower that showed promise of blooming but took a while to do so; However, when it did bloom, it bloomed quickly. The story is centered around Esther Ann Hicks, “Essie,” the seventeen-year-old daughter in a family that seems vaguely similar to the real-life family the Duggars, featured in TLC’s show 19 Kids and Counting. If you watched this show and kept up with the highly religious family, then you are probably aware of the scandals that are attached to their name.
Like the Duggars, the fictional Hicks family presents a flawless version of themselves on their extremely popular reality show Six for Hicks, where, since Essie was barely old enough to talk, cameras have been following the ultra-conservative Pastor Hicks and his sermons in a megachurch, Essie’s psychotic mother who presents herself as the angel of all moms when the recording button is clicked, and Essie and the rest of her siblings. But in the past four seasons of the show, Essie’s sister, Libby, has managed to avoid the cameras, as well as all communication with her family. When Essie finds herself pregnant, she decides it is finally time to find out where her sister has been all of these years, and why she so desperately sought release from the family that begins to suffocate Essie as well.
Weir introduces a variety of characters as the novel unfolds, showing just enough of each one to let the reader decide who really stands on the side of good or evil. Written in first person, but with chapters switching between the narratives of Essie and her two more-than-meets-the-eye accomplices (the high school jock Roarke and the journalist Liberty Bell), the quest to unravel the troubling facade upheld by the Hicks family is a testimony to the hypocrisy and flaws so often found in today’s “perfect American family.”
When you finish the novel, you’ll probably feel how I did, angry at how today’s society is so quick to support menaces cloaked in celebrity status and righteousness, but you’ll also hopefully feel invigorated by the story’s enthralling twists and calls for justice. Or maybe, like me, you’ll at least feel a sense of pride for finally reading something to completion.
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