Thanks to Goodreads for bringing this book by Tiffany McDaniel to my attention. It’s very good, but it’s not an easy read. Trigger warnings for this book include drug use, addiction, animal neglect, sex work, sexual assault of a minor, assault, murder, torture, violence (particularly violence against women), miscarriage, death, and death of a child. I’m probably forgetting some, so on that happy note, let’s dive right into this book!
The book is told from the perspective of Arcade (Arc), who has a twin sister named Daffodil (Daffy.) They both have red hair, one green eye, and one blue eye, which their grandmother tells them are called “witch’s marbles.”
The story starts with their mom nailing all their father’s clothes over the windows once she hears he’s dead, and the book doesn’t get much better from there.
Their father died of an overdose and their mother and aunt (who lives with them) are also addicts. The only way they can make money is by sleeping with men. Unfortunately, rather than running their business out of the local motel, like the other sex workers, they bring their johns home, which is exactly as safe for two little girls as you would expect it to be.
Arc and Daffy grow up so poor they rarely have enough to eat, and they don’t have toys. Their grandma gives them crayons, and they draw the world they want to live in on the concrete walls and floors of their house.
Their grandma is killed in a freak accident early on in the book, and things only get worse for the girls after that. Although they were no longer living with her, they still saw her regularly and she provided the only sense of stability they had in their lives.
Arc loves the dirt and Daffy loves the water. Arc digs for the sake of digging, and dreams of becoming an archeologist.
Daffy could spend all day in the water and at one point has ambitions of becoming an Olympic swimmer. But in high school they become addicted, and that’s the end of their promising future.
I don’t think we’re ever told what the drug is everyone is taking, but given all the references to needles and finding veins, I’m assuming heroin.
When the twins are in their early twenties, women start turning up dead in the river. The police rule them as either suicides or drug-related deaths, but that doesn’t explain the cuts, bruises, and broken bones. The police just don’t care enough to investigate.
So the twins and their friends try to keep an eye on each other and on those around them because anyone could be the killer. They warn each other to stay safe and not to go off alone, but one by one, each of their friends ends up in the river.
I’m not going to tell you how this book ends, but I will say it’s not a happy ending and it just about devastated me. I was really hoping Arc would pull through and make a better life for herself, but this is not a world in which happy endings exist.
The title of the book comes from something their grandmother told them. When she was knitting a blanket, she would point out there was the beautiful side you showed everyone else, and then there was the side with all the loose ends of yarn, which she called “the savage side.” She showed the girls how to tuck the ends of yarn into the weave to make the savage side beautiful, and she said you could do the same thing with life when it got savage.
So every time things got particularly rough, Daffy would tell Arc to make the savage side beautiful. Arc would tell an alternate version of what had just happened in which everything turned out well and no one ever got hurt.
Aside from the beautiful language, one thing I really liked about this book was the focus on female power. Arc’s grandma tells the girls they’re descended from witches, and that they have magic in them. Their aunt paints barbed wire on her face when going out to work to keep her safe. Every reference to ancestors and divine beings — whether it’s Mother Earth, or the Universe at large — are all referred to as women.
Men are only a force for destruction in the book. It’s the girls’ father who starts using drugs and gets their mom addicted. They both get clean, but he’s the first one to fall off the wagon, and it doesn’t take long for her to follow.
It’s a man who kills Granny. It’s an accident, but it’s still something awful he can’t undo.
There’s the man who works at the hotel who collects women’s tears and may or may not be the serial killer.
Then there are the men who are more overtly sinister. The johns who turn violent, the cop who rapes Arc and her sister when they’re just kids, and the drug dealer who tortures people he suspects of stealing from him.
Despite the assurances throughout this book that women are powerful, they still end up as victims throughout the book. Arc’s aunt fails to save Arc from her rapist. Arc tries and fails to save her friend when the soles of her feet are being shredded. And despite their attempts to look out for each other, women’s bodies still keep turning up in the river.
Another theme throughout the book is the Trung sisters, a pair of Vietnamese sisters who fought against the Chinese invasion of their country and ruled an independent Vietnam. When things get tough and Daffy isn’t asking Arc to turn the savage side beautiful, she asks to hear about the Trung sisters.
Like the rest of this book, it’s a story of short-lived female empowerment. I don’t think Arc ever tells Daffy how the story of the Trung sisters ends, but those of us who are familiar with it know they only ruled for three years before the Chinese emperor sent a troop of 20,000 men to quell the rebellion of the Trung sisters. The women were, in fact, defeated and beheaded. Knowing that, I probably should have known how this book was going to end.
So, yeah, a beautiful book, but a tough read. This is one I recommend for when you’re just a little too happy and need to be brought down a peg or three.