Truthin' Be Told

More truth exists than we've been led to believe: We're practically swimming in it. But to document it, to reflect it or frame it or describe it, that is work best left to careful artists. Not everyone can do it, which is itself a truth once articulated by Nancy Sinatra: "You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'," she sang in "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." One of our favorite local "truthers" is writer Kim Addonizio, whose poetry is dark and horny, but whose first novel, Little Beauties, is airy and pain-filled in a very easy-to-read way. It tells the story of three friends: a woman with OCD, a teenage mom, and a newborn girl. Each voice tells its own kinda-devastating truth, most notably in the obsessive woman's lists of rules. A fearful clean freak, she's imprisoned by them. "Rule #24: Don't go in the bedroom with the ceiling fan on unless you're very clean. It could blow dirt around." Addonizio's new novel, My Dreams Out in the Street, is about a homeless junkie, and we have a feeling the main character and her private-investigator sidekick won't be lying.