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Caleb Azumah Nelson, Reviews of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret & China's Hidden Century

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The Importance of Repetition

Smaller is a novel about the start of school and how it affects Judy Bloom's life. One of the big things I was keen on had the novel feel like one long continuous song, having this sense of verses and choruses and refrains that could come back. Each time that you come across a repeated line, it's almost like a checkpoint. You're different. The narrative has moved on. And there's also this sense of growth between that period and the last time that you read the, read whatever phrase it is. That recurring sentence isn't the only repetition in that.

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