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The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Monthly Archives: October 2013

Review of The Shining Girls

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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books, review, the shining girls

Still working through the holiday reading, here’s my review of one of those books that everyone suddenly seems to be talking about: The Shining Girls.

THE BLURB

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“THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST.

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times. 

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins theChicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . . 

THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.”

THE REVIEW

As a general rule, I hate crime novels but love stories that make clever use of time travel, so I was in two minds over whether to read this book. The comparisons to Gone Girl, which I read last year and loved, finally persuaded me to give it a try.

Let me start by saying that I don’t agree with that comparison at all. They are two books that involve a crime and have an unconventional narrative structure, but that’s literally the only things they have in common. The things I loved about Gone Girl were the brilliantly quotable prose, the clever twist, and the unreliable narration. None of that is present here – it’s a much more workmanlike novel.

That’s not to say it isn’t an enjoyable read. It was an pacey thriller that made me want to rush to the end and it had a well-executed sense of creepiness. My favourite parts actually had little to do with either crime or time travel. I loved the vignettes about the different girls the villain killed. The idea was that he only killed girls who had a spark about them – some combination of having a huge ambition and/or wanting to change the world. I was fascinated by their stories – the transgender fifties showgirl, the woman doing a man’s job during WW2, the seventies procurer of illegal abortions. It’s just a shame they all died so quickly! I actually thought the heroine was one of the weaker characters, and it was hard to see what her “shine” was meant to be. I’d rather have had one of the women listed above be the survivor who is hunting him down.

Weirdly, I enjoyed it more while I was reading it than afterwards. Once I’d put it down, I had time to think about the weaknesses. For me, the big problem was that “time travelling serial killer being pursued by escaped victim” is a truly amazing premise, and the plot just didn’t quite do it justice. I’d have liked a wider spread of time periods (it spanned 1929 to 1993)but that’s just personal preference. More problematic was that I didn’t get quite enough sense of different times, and the killer seemed far too comfortable with it all – more scenes of him struggling to adapt to changing attitudes and technology would have been great. I like time travel when it’s really mind-bending (like in the Time Traveller’s Wife) and I didn’t get that here. In effect, most of the plot would actually have played out similarly without the time travel element. The times where the author played with this (the ending, the body in the bin, the first meeting with Bartek, some of the use of objects) were some of my favourite parts, and I really wish they’d been developed more.

There also didn’t seem to be that much rhyme or reason to how the villain had acquired a)the ability to travel through time, or b)this overwhelming urge to kill. He’s a psychopath who’s found a magic house, and that’s pretty much all the explanation you’re going to get.

In conclusion, this is worth a read if you want an unusual premise, an engaging plot, and a bit of a scare. Just don’t expect Gone Girl, metaphysical mind games, or a great deal of substance.

***

As a good deal of this review hinges on comparisons with Gone Girl, you may be interested in reading my review (4 stars) of it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R11UR2VBJCIBIW

Review of Sisterland

13 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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books, curtis sittenfeld, girl reading, prep, review, sisterland

A few weeks ago, I announced that I was going to be writing a review post for every book I read. The observant amongst you might have noticed that since then, there haven’t been any book reviews, which might lead you to think that I’m either rubbish at sticking to plans, or an incredibly slow reader. In actual fact, it’s down to two issues – picking a book that I really couldn’t get on with but stubbornly refusing to read anything else until I’d finished it, and feeling that I really shouldn’t be reading when I should be finishing Ivory Terrors. 

I finally gave up on The Teleportation Accident (I’m in two minds about whether I should review a book that I didn’t finish, it’s not something that happens to me very often at all) and a blissful week in Italy finally gave me the space to get some serious reading done. Over the next couple of days, I’ll therefore be putting up the reviews of my holiday reading. I’m starting with Sisterland, the latest book from Curtis Sittenfeld. She’s one of my absolute favourite authors, and one of the few writers of realistic, contemporary fiction that I enjoy at all. 

 

Image

THE BLURB

From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.
 
Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.
 
Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves.

MY REVIEW – 5 Stars

Curtis Sittenfeld’s first novel, Prep, is one of my all-time favourite books, and I’ve also hugely enjoyed her other works. Therefore, I was going into this one with high expectations, especially as I’d heard it had a telepathy themes, and I always love it when authors blend a literary approach with paranormal or fantasy elements.

I absolutely wasn’t disappointed. This is a beautifully written novel with characters that take on a life of their own. The paranormal aspects (basically, the lead characters are psychic twins) is quite subtle, and acts more as a catalyst for the story than the main focus of the ploy. Ultimately, the book is about family relationships – between sisters, of course, but also between children and parents (in both directions), and between husbands and wives. I particularly loved the way the central marital relationship was portrayed. Fiction generally only shows love affairs during their passionate beginnings or bitter endings, but here was a touching (though never overly sentimental) steady-state relationship, complete with a few non-explicit scenes of hot marital sex.

For most of the book, very little happens. The story divides about fifty/fifty between the narrator reminiscing about her life up until this point, and scenes of her and the people around her getting on with their fairly normal lives. Usually, that would be enough to make me drop a book after a few chapters. I feel no shame in admitting that for me, plot usually comes first. However, there’s something about Sittenfeld’s writing that just gels with me. Scenes of her characters taking a baby to a park are oddly compelling, and sometimes even a little profound.

The flashbacks are done particularly well. Just like in Prep, adult hindsight is used to add both distance and poignancy to teenage memories. It’s subtle, but the “present day” scenes are actually also being told in flashback from a few years into the future, and this adds an interesting extra dimension.

This book probably isn’t for everyone. If you can’t cope without tons of action, look away now. Similarly, if you like gritty tales, Sittenfeld probably isn’t for you, full stop. I’m perfectly happy with stories of middle class life, but if you have a low tolerance for “first world problems” then consider yourself fairly warned.

If you liked the author’s other novels, however, then I can confidently report that there hasn’t been a drop in standards. And if you’re just looking for an enjoyable literary novel, then I’d hugely recommend it.

One final thought – this hugely reminded me of my favourite story in Girl Reading, which tells the tale of two Victorian psychic twins, one of whom embraces their power while the other denies it. I’d love to know if Sittenfeld has read it!

***

This review mentions two other books and for anyone who is interested, my review of Prep (5 stars) can be found here:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1APBIXP34IE42

And my review of Girl Reading (3 stars) can be found here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2O1W6C6G9ELRK

Incidentally, while its influence may not be as obvious as, say, The Vampire Diaries, I consider Prep to be one of my major inspiration for The Cavaliers in its treatment of a normal girl at an elite institution. The first few chapters I wrote (long before it even involved vampires!) quite self-consciously tried to imitate her style, before I decided to go in a totally different direction. 

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