The Discovery of Honey

Hero, the hyper-precocious and nosily omniscient narrator of Terry Griggs’s riotous new book, The Discovery of Honey, is not one to hide her light under a bushel, nor to conceal significant, usually scandalous, happenings in her rural hometown, including her own conception, birth, and various other unruly incidents that occur throughout her young life.

Running wild even before she can walk, Hero goes on a dangerous road trip with an aunt, later takes up with her feral, bad-boy cousin, investigates a crime, kills a best friendship with a few aggressively-applied home truths, falls in conflicted love with the cousin, then determinedly, if unconvincingly, falls out.

A backwater bildungsroman—”dung” definitely included, as Hero is forthright dishing the dirt—The Discovery of Honey confirms Griggs as one of the most uproarious and confoundingly original writers at work today. It’s funny business all around.