True Believer is a mesmerising and wonderful story, a sharp, true and moving narrative poem that breaks down old forms of telling about teenage angst while building up new ways of expressing hope and optimism. Wolff continues her tale of Verna LaVaughn that began with
Make Lemonade, focusing this time much more on LaVaughn's school work and college hopes, and less on teenage mother Jolly and her two children. To make the obvious comparison with her almost-namesake Virginia Woolf, Wolff has made the modern flow of consciousness her own, telling exactly how it is to LaVaughn's 15-year-old self:
Jody is split-second surprised with wide eyes
at the sight of me,
then his face changes,
like a tablecloth coming down over a table.
He shifts into neutral,
Detaching me.
Wolff's choice of poetry above prose may put some readers off, but one read of the first page will remove any doubts that this cannot be a gripping story; indeed, its form lends itself perfectly to the all-inclusive narrative. LaVaughn tells her story in the first person and the poetic form allows thoughts to mingle with words and actions, so that readers constantly have emotional and physical images thrown at them. A less slippery form, such as first-person narrative through a diary, does not shimmer and dance to let in the questions, doubts and hopes of a teenage girl. Those unspoken thoughts must be laboriously written out, not sewn into the text as if they are part of the speech and the actions of the characters.
LaVaughn's optimism for even the most simple things, coupled with her touching honesty about her failings, is uplifting. While Wolff wrote Make Lemonade "for young mothers", True Believer is for those in the title, whether mothers or daughters, young or old, male or female: those who do truly believe in hope and optimism for the future. It is also for anyone who's had to live through being 15, having a mother and having to do their homework while juggling their friends' opinions with their own, and retaining their happiness and sanity at the same time. --Olivia Dickinson
