Blame by Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven’s Blame rides high on the strength of its narrator. Patsy is in her late 20s, a keenly intelligent history professor and self-proclaimed party girl. One night, in a blackout drunk, she hits a mother and daughter in her driveway, killing them both. On a technicality, she escapes a murder charge, but is sentenced to four years in prison for criminal negligence. Blame chronicles Patsy’s time in prison, and her attempts to begin a new life in the years after her release. Now sober, she is shocked to learn how emotionally stunted she has become, and she spends years learning to establish healthy relationships, and to build a new family. Blame’s greatest strength is in its portrayal of Patsy’s remorse, and her desire to become a better, more admirable person. It is a quiet novel, written in clear, agonizingly honest prose by a tremendously talented writer.

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Recommended by Sara D.