True Grit
A fourteen-year-old hires a drunk marshal to avenge her father, and narrates it fifty years on.
Mattie Ross is fourteen when her father is shot in Fort Smith, and she hires the drunkest, meanest marshal available on the theory that he will do what is required. Portis tells it entirely in her voice, recalled decades later as an unmarried woman with a bank and no patience, and the comedy comes from her refusal to be impressed by anyone. Two film adaptations have softened it; the novel does not.
Recommended by 1 Person
Laura Lippman
But it's easy to forget that the story is told from the astringent point of view of a 60-something woman who has lived her life absolutely on her own terms, indifferent to public opinion.
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