Fifth Star for Tender Morsels (SLJ)!

School Library Journal (via Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA) reckons:

It’s heavy fare even for sophisticated readers, but the author hits all the right notes, giving voice to both the joys and terrors that sexual experience can bestow without saying more than readers need to know to be fully with the characters. While the story explores what it means to be human, it is at its heart an incisive exploration of the uses and limitations of dissociation as a coping mechanism. Beautifully written and surprising, this is a novel not to be missed.

Plus, KC at Booklist, although s/he hasn't given me a star (aawww?), says:

Lanagan's storytelling is deftly crafted, peppered throughout with archaic, accented English that breeds just the right level of strangeness for her mythical, quasi-medieval settings. Her descriptions of the yearly carnival and the rawness of everyday village life are palpably grotesque at times...her depictions of Liga's induced abortions and rape, and of Urdda's mystical revenge on her mother's attackers, are breathtakingly shocking in their scabrous detail...the wisdom of the book lies in its overthrow of expectations and convention, its examination of the consequences of foolish and desperate decisions, and its stern forgiveness of those who make them.

I like 'scabrous'. I like 'stern'.