'Girls on Fire': A Vicious, Seductive Look at Mean Girls at Their Worst

Hamlet does not enjoy taking photos with books.
 Our new "office pug" will be joining our family on September 11th.  We can't wait for our new baby! 

"Girls today thought they could do anything.  Girls burned bright, knew what they wanted, imagined they could take it, and it was glorious and it was terrifying." 

It's Labor Day weekend which for many of us marks the last burst of sunshine laziness that we'll revel in before the sky gets dark earlier and then we descend into the gray days of fall through winter.

When you go on your last grasp of summer fun vacations, be sure to take along a page turning book to enjoy while you bask in the September sun.

I devoured Robin Wasserman's first adult novel 'Girls on Fire' which is the latest "It Girl" in a long line of psychologically deranged thrill rides about girls with big issues: Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, The Good Girl - just to name a few of the "Girl" books I have read.

The novel takes place in the early 1990s in Battle Creek, Pennsylvania and centers around three girls: Hannah (who becomes Dex) - a non descript outcast whose loneliness draws her into an obsessive friendship, Lacey - the intriguing, Kurt Cobain worshipping, rebel, new girl, who does what she wants despite an abusive step father who she nicknames "The Bastard" (I kept imagining the girl version of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club), and Nikki - the beyond popular, mean girl that everyone wants to please despite the fact that even her boyfriend's recent suicide hasn't softened her hard edges.

Wasserman's writing is as vicious and seductive as the girls in this book.  She captured my high school experience in the early 90s.  I had friends who worshipped Kurt Cobain.  I ate Snack Wells cookies believing they were good for me.  I thought Kirk Cameron was hot.  I remember mall dates when walking into Express to buy jeans felt grown up. I remember Benetton back packs (Nikki's dog's name is Benetton), and I remember Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign.  The undertones of Satanic cults were everywhere in my small rural, PA town, so much so that I chose the topic Satanism as my 9th grade term paper topic.  I remember the advent of the grunge scene. Wasserman's cultural references took me back to that uncomfortable time in my life, but to the darker side that I never succumbed to, or that never existed, or that I never knew existed.

I know teenagers are messy (and were messy), but are they this mean? Did Wasserman merely take the stereotypes of girls and present the dystopic vision of what really goes on at high school parties, or out in the woods, or in their beat up used cars, or down by the lake, or behind the closed bedroom doors?

As a high school teacher for 15 years, I know that high school girls are intense, but these girls are violent, horrifying train wrecks that I like to think are not the rule but the exception.

'Girls on Fire' never lets up.  It burns with a hungry, dark insatiability as Wasserman switches the perspective - past and present, Lacey to Dex and even throws in some thoughts from the parents who might even be sadder stereotypes than their desperate daughters.  The power of the novel comes from the suspense that builds and the "truth" of Craig's suicide as well as the fate of Nikki, Dex and Lacey. It would be cruel of me (crueler than the attitude of the girls in this book) if I revealed any of the unraveling.

Although the girls never rise about their labels nor do their character arcs give you any type of hero worth rooting for, more than likely you will find yourself caught up in the fire, burning through pages to see the inevitable, unrelenting destruction.  I was seduced and saddened.  Thrilled and let down.  Disgusted and worried.

When I closed the book at the end, I uttered one word, "Damn."

I rethought my high school experience and my obsession with the movie 'Heathers,' how I loved reading Stephen King novels, how I listened to Metallica, Joy Division, The Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush and Kurt Cobain. It reminded me that we all have a bit of darkness inside of us.  Most of us, though, know how to stay in the light.

"Remember Me This Way": A Creepy, Twisted and Slow Burn Thriller

How well do we really know anyone?

Sabine Durrant's dysfunctional marriage thriller "Remember Me This Way" goes beyond the surface of the secrets in a marriage between a sociopath and an introverted librarian that he stalks and eventually marries to show how easy it is to be deceived.

I'm not always a huge fan of thrillers - especially thrillers that show how messy marriages between crazy people can be.  Infidelity, twisted psychotic episodes, abuse - both mental and physical . . . all of these traits seem to mark the "must reads" that deal with dysfunctional marriages.  Just like in "The Girl on the Train" Sabine Durrant gives us a clingy, passive woman as a main character.  Lizzie unlike Rachel in "The Girl on the Train" has some desirable traits.  For one, she isn't drunk all the time, and for the most part, she doesn't tell lies to everyone that she knows.  Lizzie's conflict is her husband's tragic death which happened a year before the book begins.  Due to her guilt over feeling a little bit relieved after his death, she hasn't been able to visit the site of his car accident.  When she musters the will to go there, she finds flowers from a woman named Xenia there already, and she begins to unravel the secret life that her husband, Zach led.

Was anything that he told her true? If he really was a horrible person, what does it say about her that she really loved him? What does it say about her that she often felt responsible for his abusive and erratic behavior?

The narration switches back and forth from Lizzie trying to figure out what really happened to her husband and what he was really up to during their brief and tumultuous marriage.  She also wants to answer the questions that she has about whether or not he even died or if he is just waiting to punish her for the break up letter that she sent to his art studio.  In Zach's chapters, the reader becomes privy to the world of a misanthrope who never really tells the truth to anyone in his adult life, and about how easily he can camouflage himself into the nice guy or the new guy or the artist guy.  It's a dark world that Zach inhabits full of stalking just to see if he can get away with it and a trail of lies and abhorrent behavior with people who foolishly trust and even love him.

Lizzie's story is sad, but Durrant handles her codependent behavior with care.  She gives Lizzie a backbone (even if it isn't a very strong one).  The biggest downfall in this novel for me was the ease that Lizzie excepted the obviously troubled and incredibly spooky teenager, Onnie, into her home.  Although Lizzie felt reservations in allowing Onnie into her life, she caves quickly due to the pity she feels for her.  I never got a true sense of Onnie, and I never really wanted to.  She was more of an annoyance even though her story was integral to the plot.

Overall, I found Durrant's book to be a sly and well crafted thriller that felt perfect for an overly rainy week of summer.  I flew through it, and was satisfied with the outcome.  Something about this dysfunctional marriage rang more true than the relationships in the wildly successful "Girl on the Train" characters and their flawed love lives, or even "Gone Girl" and the sadistic nature of the wife who wants to punish her husband for his infidelity.  The pace wasn't as break neck, but quieter and even a bit repetitious at parts.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself while reading it, and recommend it to anyone looking for a quick thriller for the beach.

"Reconstructing Amelia": Mean girls on steroids

It's not often after I read a book that I look at my daughters ages 10 and 5 and fear for their future.  I hugged them tightly after I read "Reconstructing Amelia" by Kimberly McCreight, and told them very seriously, "I'm here for you no matter what happens in your lives.  Know that you can always count on me to listen and be here for you." Who knows what they will encounter by the time they are each 15 years old like the main character Amelia in McCreight's suspenseful debut novel.

Like so many of the other books I have posted about lately, this book also was compared to "Gone Girl" which is a silly comparison since the subject material is so much different.  "Reconstructing Amelia" focuses on the dark world of secret clubs at Grace Hall, a prestigious private school in Brooklyn and "Gone Girl" isn't really about that at all.   Maybe the comparisons come from the suspense, the unraveling of the mystery, and the dual narrations, but that is really where the comparisons should end.

The suspense forces the reader to turn page after page as each secret unfolds.  After Kate receives a phone call from Grace Hall's dean of students , informing her that her daughter had been suspended for plagiarizing a paper and that she had to pick her up NOW,  Kate freaks a bit and is puzzled. How could her over-achieving, introverted daughter ever be in trouble? Once Kate rearranges her high powered attorney schedule for the day, she arrives to get her daughter over an hour late only to discover emergency vehicles at the school.  She finds out, to her horror, that her beloved only child Amelia is dead from a supposed suicide. Kate doesn't believe that Amelia would ever jump off of the roof of Grace Hall, but her grief keeps her from questioning.  It's not until she receives an anonymous text that reads "Amelia didn't jump" that Kate decides to delve deeper into what really happened to her daughter.  What she discovers shatters her image of Amelia's social life, and makes her question herself as a mother. The suspense of the narration as Kate probes deeper into her daughter's recent history and the secret club she joined is startling.  Can girls really be this mean? Do clubs like this exist? Would a school really be this negligent in helping the girls who are bullied?

Yes, just like in "Gone Girl" there are multiple narrators in this book.  There are also parts of the book which are told through emails, blog posts, and text messages.  Although that seems a bit cliche given the fact that many YA authors have worn out the multi-genre format for a book, it works here.  What gave me a little bit of pause was Kate's character.  Amelia's narration reveals her to be mostly an innocent who was left alone often and made choices based on the moment because her support system (her mostly absent but loving mother and her completely self-centered, and acidic best friend, Sylvia) were non-existent.  Kate, on the other hand, comes off a bit clumsy especially for a high powered attorney.

Yes, there is a mystery surrounding the death of a main character which reveals horrible secrets.  I loved the suspense of the book until close to the end when the truths start tumbling out all over the place.  At that point it was hard for me to believe and maybe I just didn't like what really happened or the too tidy wrap up of all the events.  The girls were just sooooooooo mean and unfeeling, and their parents were just as callous.  On top of that, the improbability that a bereft mom would be able to have such a huge part in the investigation of her daughter's death AND never really run into huge road blocks during the unveiling of the truth was far fetched.

Regardless of the few flaws of the book, I devoured it and know that anyone who is looking for a quick, stimulating summer (or anytime) read will love the edginess of "Reconstructing Amelia." If anything, it will make you ask your kids what they are REALLY up to in school and in their private lives, maybe even check their text messages and Facebook pages.  If your kids are too young for all the stuff that clutters our lives and seemingly takes over the lives of our teenagers, just give your kids a good big hug and tell them that you love them, and maybe ask them to stay kids for as long as possible.