SRP Book Review #25
Cracks by Sheila Kohler
165 pages
Cracks is the story of a murder at a South African girls' boarding school. One of the 13 girls on the swim team disappears, and the rest of them come back for a reunion several years later. The story switches back and forth between present day and when they were students. The book is written in the first person, but there isn't a singular pronoun in the entire narration, so we never know which of the girls is telling the story, if it is even one of them in particular.
Sometimes it seemed a little overstylized and pretentious to me. It reminded me a little bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a movie that I hated, although I did ultimately like the book in the end.
Most importantly, and not a given in an arty, literary story about a murder, is that we actually get to find out what happened. I wasn't too worried, because the book came highly recommended from someone who hates artsily ambiguous mystery resolutions, but still.
Cracks by Sheila Kohler
165 pages
Cracks is the story of a murder at a South African girls' boarding school. One of the 13 girls on the swim team disappears, and the rest of them come back for a reunion several years later. The story switches back and forth between present day and when they were students. The book is written in the first person, but there isn't a singular pronoun in the entire narration, so we never know which of the girls is telling the story, if it is even one of them in particular.
Sometimes it seemed a little overstylized and pretentious to me. It reminded me a little bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a movie that I hated, although I did ultimately like the book in the end.
Most importantly, and not a given in an arty, literary story about a murder, is that we actually get to find out what happened. I wasn't too worried, because the book came highly recommended from someone who hates artsily ambiguous mystery resolutions, but still.
posted by Thinposter @ 5:27 PM
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