A coming-of-age novel set in America in the late 70s, Sandra Hutchison's The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire centers on the relationship between David, a physics professor in his 30s, and Molly, the teenage girl who used to babysit his daughter. Molly doesn't babysit for David anymore because his wife and daughter recently perished in a plane crash. He is too overwhelmed by grief to take care of himself, so his estranged sister hires Molly to keep house for him. Molly has problems of her own. Her parents are divorced. Her father loves her but now has another wife and children, a family where she has a marginal place. She mostly lives with her mother, a notorious and uninhibited artist who commemorates Molly's first period by constructing the figure of a girl with tampons and, of course, exhibiting it publicly. Molly's schoolmates call her Tampon Girl. The physics professor doesn't seduce or become obsessed with the teenager, nor does she have a girlish crush on him. While David … [Read more...]