All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Content Warning: This section references physical and emotional abuse and drug use, and it centers on a sexualized relationship between an adult and a minor.

The abused and neglected daughter of a woman addicted to drugs and her dealer husband, Wavy grows up without supervision or protection. She survives minute to minute, navigating her mother’s mood swings and mental illness, including a germ phobia that centers on children, their mouths, and food. Wavy’s growth may be stunted from years of near starvation at her mother’s hands—a time during which Wavy almost disappears. Wavy learns to avoid eating in front of people, subsisting on scraps from the trash. She also avoids touch, having been beaten, burned, and poisoned by her mother.

In this vulnerable state, Wavy meets Kellen. At eight years old, she understandably embraces the kindness the much-older Kellen shows her. Kellen shares Wavy’s history of abuse and neglect; never having had a childhood himself, he marvels at Wavy’s purity but soon falls into a sexualized relationship with her. Greenwood portrays Wavy without judgment but also without any particular sympathy. She includes outside perspectives to call Wavy’s choices into account. As Wavy ages, she grows very little, exacerbating the appearance of her age difference with Kellen.