Hot new book of the summer. Don't bother buying it. If you can get it free at the library, it's an OK read.
It's Cline's first novel, although she did win some award for something else she wrote at some other time. But because it's her first novel, she relies on narrative cliches a little too often. "Now he had hard edges, the creep of tattoos under his shirt. He didn't remember me and why should he? I was a woman outside his range of erotic attentions." But Cline leaves those behind at times and can now and then write with great force. "Even possessing that small amount of money tindered an obsessive need in me, a desire to see how much I was worth. The equation excited me."
The story follows a young girl who tries to run away from home, hooks up with some vagabond "tribe" but never really fits in. Modeled after the Charles Manson group in the 1960's, the reader knows from the beginning that something terrible will happen. But the fact of that makes the book almost boring until you get to the Big Thing That Happens. Who really cares about the little lost and sometimes stupid girl when the Killing is waiting around the corner?
I guess it's just me, but I got tired of her sad whines about not fitting in and then her stark realizations that she, too, could have been one of the killers if the group just liked her better. Wow. Too bad on that one!
It's a quick read but I am not sure I would bother. We all know the Charles Manson stuff, we all know about runaway girls. There's nothing here that makes the reader feel good and there are really no likable characters. The narrator tells the story thirty-some years after the killing, so she is not a young girl any longer, but she is still a bit whiny and lost and sad. We can all be whiny and lost and sad but buck up. Get over yourself and get on with it. Get a real job. Get over the fact you once belonged to a creepy, sadistic cult.
Get some therapy and change your life.
OK, harsh? Probably. But hey, it's my review.....
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