I honestly can’t think of another novel that had quite the emotional impact on me that reading On The Savage Side did. Searing, brutal and unflinching in its portrayal of addiction and the devastation that it wreaks, the novel ripped my heart out and stomped all over it. In telling the story of identical twins Daffy and Arc, McDaniels gives voice to countless marginalized women, and her beautiful, lyrical prose reveals the humanity among the wreckage of lives, hopes and dreams lost to drugs.
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel, (List Price: $29, Knopf, 9780593320709, February 2023)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi