Content area
Full Text
The plot of Leslie Marshall's A Girl Could Stand Up is so full of coincidence and neatly tied\u2011up ends that you would expect it to be completely unbelievable. For a while it hovers on the brink of the unlikely yet possible, and eventually it topples over into full\u2011blown preposterousness. It is to Marshall's great credit, though, that this does not impede the flow of the book or impair the reader's enjoyment of it.
Elray Mayhew is the narrator and the novel's central character. The pivotal moment in her life was when, at the age of six, her parents died in a freak accident, which she witnessed, and which meant she was brought up by her uncles. The narrative is framed by the voice of the adult Elray, and...