Karen Joy Fowler

Briefly, Rosemary is the unreliable narrator of this novel, unreliable because she a) doesn't tell us everything and b) isn't sure if what she remembers actually happened. The story starts in what she calls the 'middle' where she is at college when another young woman, called Harlow, goes beserk in the cafeteria and Rosemary is also arrested. Then we have various flashbacks to Rosemary's unusual childhood, in between what happens at college, and then a very short skimmed through section concerning what has happened since college and when she's, I think, around forty. Avoiding spoilers, I would say I found that last part the most unconvincing, considering the attitudes of the police and FBI to her brother and their suspicions about her - why would they have allowed her to have anything to do with the institution in question?

Luckily or perhaps unluckily I didn't know the big twist beforehand, which comes about 70 odd pages into the novel, concerning the narrator's sister. I'm not sure I would've bothered to purchase the book if I'd known. Luckily I did spend only a couple of pounds on it in a charity shop.

This novel has an agenda, up in neon lights. I'm not unsympathetic to the message, but the book hits the reader over the head with it constantly, in a way that risks alienating readers, and certainly - in my case - boring and irritating them. I didn't find any of the characters interesting or convincing, and the silly antics of her 'friend' Harlow with a stolen puppet of Madame Defarge were wearing in the extreme. The novel's theme should be sibling rivalry, jealousy and guilt, but it's lost among the heavy handed preaching about animal rights and the triviality of the protagonist's college days. So a 2-star disappointment.… (mais)