Sunday, 17 April 2022

Girl A by Abigail Dean


326 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

 

Review

 

Yet another book where I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

This is what it says on the back of the paperback:

‘Girl A’, she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’

I am Lex Gracie: but they call me Girl A.

I grew up with my family on the moors.

I escaped when I was fifteen years old.

NOW SOMETHING IS PULLING ME BACK…

 

And that is followed by ‘The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl’ – Elle.

The description and the blurb sounded intriguing and pulled me in as soon as I read them. But… Whatever this story is, it is not a mystery or a thriller. It’s a fascinating story, that’s for sure, but in a ‘car-crash-I-should-look-away-but-I-can not' sorta way. Sure, there are one or two shocking and unexpected revelations (which for obvious reasons I won’t go into) in this book, but most of what the reader gets is revealed in the blurb and in the first chapter.

This is the story of a family in crisis. Of a father becoming so obsessively religious that he puts his children in mortal danger, and a mother who isn’t strong enough (or too devoted to her husband?) to interfere on behalf of her children. It gives a fascinating view of how the circumstances affect every child a little differently. While they all suffer, they don’t suffer or deal with their suffering in identical ways.

Alexandra (Lex) – Girl A; the one who got away and saved her siblings.

Ethan – Boy A; as the oldest child he had privileges or was being groomed by his father to follow in his footsteps. He creeped my out, especially since he is referred to as a sociopath by one of his siblings. What creeped me out even more was that none of the siblings felt the need to warn his wife-to-be about the risks she faced if she married him.

Delilah – Girl B; described as a bit of a pretty airhead, she may have been smarter than the others in that she managed to charm those around her, including her father to some extent.

Gabriel – Boy B; ruined by his adoptive parents’ dreams of fame based on his nightmarish past as much as his horrific real family and everything that happened there.

Noah – Boy D; the only one young enough to have no memories of the horrors inflicted on the others and for that reason kept away from his siblings in an effort by his adoptive parents to give him a ‘normal’ life.

Evie – Girl C; the sibling closed to Lex.

Daniel – The only child without a chapter who would have been ‘Boy C’.

Of course, since the book is told only from Girl A’s perspective, we don’t necessarily get an accurate description of how her siblings experience and deal with their early years. All we know is what Girl A has observed and the conclusions she has drawn from that.

Although Lex’s escape and some of the horrors leading up to that moment are revealed very early on, there were huge stretches of the story where things didn’t seem that bad. The horror of their situation creeps up on the reader, just as it would have crept up on the children. As a result, the read became increasingly uncomfortable for me. I knew things had to get horrific in order to live up to both the book blurb and Lex finding the courage to escape the chains that bound her, but there was a long stretch where it was possible for me to believe that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

As I said, this book didn’t read as a mystery or thriller for me. It felt more like a character study; a description of how even when trapped in the same nightmare, all participants come out of it with different memories, different defense mechanisms, and different (lasting) consequences.

Finally, there is something I didn’t know before I started this book and now that I do know, I’m not sure how I feel about it. As it turns out, this story is based on a real-life domestic tragedy known as the Turpin family saga. Click the link if you would like to know more about that.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. While it was a captivating read, it wasn’t at all what I expected. There were a few questions I would have liked a (clearer) answer to and, most frustratingly, I have no idea how the book ended. I mean, I read all of it, but I couldn’t tell you if that ending was hopeful or heart-breaking. The fact that I don’t really care what the answer to that conundrum is, explains my 3 ½ stars rating.  

 


 


 

 

Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

 


Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

275 pages

Book Club Read / Part of The Art of Reading Book Club with Colm Tóbín

 

Blurb

 

When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents’ money, it’s called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she’d not sure what to call it, but it involves:

  • A badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children;
  • Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room;
  • Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks;
  • Money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections

Exciting times ensue.

 

Review

I may have gone into this book a little prejudiced. My daughter warned me I probably wouldn’t like it. As much as I would have loved for her to be wrong, I’m afraid she knows me very well and was spot on. It appears that Colm Toibin and I are not on the same page when it comes to preferred fiction…at all.

I didn’t like Ava. I know young people (myself included at that time) can be rather self-obsessed, but I found Ava particularly selfish. Everything is about her and if she does consider others, i.e. Julian and Edith, it is mostly in terms of how they relate to her, how they affect or improve her life. Sure, towards the end of the book she does appear to go on a bit of a journey and seems to gain some insight into how her actions and lack thereof affect Edith, but for me it was too little too late. What’s more, if I had been Edith, I would have told her as much and moved on…fast.

Despite what Ava continuously tells herself and the reader, I couldn’t help feeling that Julian was her victim too. Surely the fact that he does ask her to move to Hamburg with him indicates that he is more attached to her than he has been willing to admit. Surely her initial agreement followed by her last moment change of mind means that she now inflicts the same level of hurt on him as she inflicted on Edith earlier in the story? Does she even let him know she’s changed her mind about following him?

To be fair, I didn’t have a hard time reading this book and I wasn’t tempted to not finish it at any time. On the other hand, I found it impossible to connect to any of the three main characters. I never figured out why they were attracted to each other or what they got out of sharing time (and bodies). While Ava’s motivation seems obvious that is only true when it comes to her finding a luxurious roof over her head without having to part with money. What either Julian or Edith gets out of being with Ava never became clear to me.

A few notes I took while reading:

  • I wonder if this book is (somewhat) pretentious, or if that’s ‘just’ me?
  • Is it me or is Ava rather pathetic in her neediness? Sure, she’s young (23) but is that an excuse for her using Julian and/or allowing Julian to use her?
  • Why is she attracted to Edith?
  • On page 149 I came across an observation Edith makes about Ava that feels rather apt:

 

“You keep describing yourself as this uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special—which is fair, who doesn’t—but you don’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad.”

 To me that sounds like just more self-indulgence. If she tells herself she’s bad, she doesn’t have to take a close(r) look at why she acts the way she does.

  • It would help if I understood why both Julian and Edith want Ava in their lives. Nothing in her narrative makes her attractive in my eyes.
  • It’s funny how, in a book written from a first-person perspective, I never felt as if I got the know Ava. Mind you, Julian and Edith, as seen and described by Ava, weren’t any clearer.
  • Conclusion: MEH! 

Maybe it is time for me to admit that (some) of the upcoming Irish writers are just not telling stories aimed at me. On the other hand, maybe I have to consider that I may be missing something when I’m reading books like this one. The long and short of it is that while this book was easy enough to read and the story enough of a trainwreck to keep my attention, I’m not overly impressed. ‘Exciting’ is not the term I would choose to describe the times in this story. For me ‘desperate’ would have been a more appropriate term.