DOREEN BY DOREEN

In Ferrone’s novel, an adult high school dropout earning her GED reflects on life’s lessons.

Twenty-nine-year-old Doreen Kablowski’s unique take on life shines through in the autobiography she’s writing as a requirement to get her high school equivalency degree. Although she grew up in Orlando, Florida, she writes of not having “a Disney-type of experience when I was growing up as a little girl…it would have been better if I had no father because there was nothing magical about him.” She’s in recovery as a glue-huffing addict; she hasn’t done it for more than a year, but she started at age 6. “All’s I know is that the shouting and crashing and hiding and running all felt a little less bad with a hit of rubber cement.” After dropping out of school in ninth grade, her life winds through a marriage and a life in the Berkshires, through a string of bad relationships, and onto a Greyhound bus back to her home city. Things take a detour after a love-at-first-sight meeting with Augusto, an undocumented worker at a Wawa convenience store in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, on the way to Orlando alone, she meets a kind older man named Rajiwho takes her to his ashram; there they meet Saul, the cousin of the ashram’s deceased founder. This unlikely trio form a strong bond and move to Orlando together, where Doreen and Raji join Narcotics Anonymous and Doreen gets a job playing Snow White at Disney World, all while struggling to move forward in her life. Readers may find the narrative structure of Ferrone’s novel to be confusing at times, with its conversational, stream-of-consciousness style, but the approach does convey Doreen’s perspective well. The realistic details of her life as a Disney princess can be amusing: “As Snow White you’re not supposed to haul off and punch somebody in the face even if they have it coming because it could scare the kids.” Overall, Ferrone’s protagonist proves to be an engaging character, and readers will root for her success as she struggles to get her life together.

A somewhat scattered but endearing romp.