Recent college graduate Elise is in debt\u2014she can\u2019t even afford her antidepressants\u2014although she doesn\u2019t tell her boyfriend, Tom, nor does he know about her longtime eating disorder. Elise is grateful for the opportunity to make good money with Salt of the Earth Sugar, plus she sees harvest work as \u201ca real life experience. Something they could say they\u2019d done when they got back to Brooklyn, where hardscrabble Steinbeckian authenticity was social currency.\u201d At the campground where she and Tom park their camper, Elise meets \u201chot and cool\u201d queer girl Cee, another seasonal worker; develops a crush on her; and fears that Tom has done the same. (Elise\u2019s preoccupation with being cool can be amusing and is presumably intended to play as merely juvenile rather than mockable.) One day, at a nearby church that offers harvesters free meals, Elise sees a sign that reads \u201cThe beets can only hurt you if you LISTEN to them!!!!,\u201d and before long she\u2019s hearing a voice in her head that says \u201cReturn the dirt.\u201d Sarsfield\u2019s writing is sturdy throughout, and the farm setting and duties are vividly rendered, but the novel doesn\u2019t seem to know where to go with its surreal turns, which come to include the disappearance of harvest workers. Elise\u2019s self-pity can be tiresome, and her self-destructive tendencies, which include erratic spending, can be wearying, but readers won\u2019t draw any conclusions about Elise that she hasn\u2019t already drawn; she thinks of herself as, quite perfectly, \u201can expert in egomaniacal self-hatred, the dark art of inventing new and spectacular ways to feel bad.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recent college graduate Elise is in debt\u2014she can\u2019t even afford her antidepressants\u2014although she doesn\u2019t tell her boyfriend, Tom, nor does he know about her longtime eating disorder. Elise is grateful for the opportunity to make good money with Salt of the Earth Sugar, plus she sees harvest work as \u201ca real life experience. Something they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}