This book unfurls very slowly. The writing is verbose and meandering and very cyclical, with so much of the story taking place deep in the unsettled parts of the main character's mind. Imagine if Dickens took to the tropics, and you'd be in the right neighborhood.
This wasn't the murder mystery I was expecting. It was very much about the way a tragedy affects the people involved, both directly and peripherally. The beginning felt like a slog because all I really wanted was to get into that search for answers, when instead we were very much stuck in the mind of the sister who had been left behind. But as the hunt began, the focus on Claire (our protagonist) rather than Alison (the mysteriously dead sister) became more and more obvious.
We get a picture of desperate, performative people who are constantly judging and dismissing each other. We get a story of obsession and lies, supposedly for the sake of finding the truth. But in a story that so brilliantly mirrors real life, the truth is only a tiny fraction of what Claire finds.
Personally, this book was not for me. I don't read a lot of books that are this internal to one character (or, in this case, two). And the writing is very pretentious, such that a thesaurus will be required for the casual reader, and lovers of fast, twisty thrillers will grow impatient and frustrated with the pacing and focus. The paragraphs are massive and a little intimidating, and there were a few times that it took me a good chunk of a page before I knew which character we are focusing on. Though I did love the inserts of audio diary, newspaper clippings, and the narratives of peripheral characters.
This wasn't the murder mystery I was expecting. It was very much about the way a tragedy affects the people involved, both directly and peripherally. The beginning felt like a slog because all I really wanted was to get into that search for answers, when instead we were very much stuck in the mind of the sister who had been left behind. But as the hunt began, the focus on Claire (our protagonist) rather than Alison (the mysteriously dead sister) became more and more obvious.
We get a picture of desperate, performative people who are constantly judging and dismissing each other. We get a story of obsession and lies, supposedly for the sake of finding the truth. But in a story that so brilliantly mirrors real life, the truth is only a tiny fraction of what Claire finds.
Personally, this book was not for me. I don't read a lot of books that are this internal to one character (or, in this case, two). And the writing is very pretentious, such that a thesaurus will be required for the casual reader, and lovers of fast, twisty thrillers will grow impatient and frustrated with the pacing and focus. The paragraphs are massive and a little intimidating, and there were a few times that it took me a good chunk of a page before I knew which character we are focusing on. Though I did love the inserts of audio diary, newspaper clippings, and the narratives of peripheral characters.