The Shining Girls │ Book Review

★ ★ ✰ ✰ ✰

Non-spoiler review of The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

❝ The Time Traveler’s Wife meets The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ❞

In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis walks into The House to find a dead body in the hallway and a room full of mementos from dead girls. Their murders, actions he has yet to commit. Those “shining girls” – bright young things, full of potential – call to him and The House obliges by opening its door to other times. And so Harper’s quest through time begins from the 30s to the 90s, alternating decades, back and forth as he stalks girls from their childhood to the moment he kills them.

But then in 1989, one of his victims – Kirby Mazrachi – miraculously survives his savage attack and a few years later becomes an investigative journalist looking for clues about her attack which she suspects was not random. The narrative mostly alternates between the two characters’ viewpoint, the chapters shifting in time, with Harper’s obsessively stalking these shining girls and Kirby’s obsessively stalking Harper.

Plot Summary by The Book Smugglers

This concept of a time travelling serial killer was extremely compelling and to me, at the time, very original. It has, however, been done before with 'The Beauty of Murder' by A.K. Benedict and Netflix's 'In the Shadow of the Moon' and upon its release, was compared to 'Gone Girl' in its brilliance.

That brilliance faded pretty quickly. It's difficult to say exactly when this happened, but for me the point of realisation was nearing the end of the audiobook when time was literally running out the door with the answers to my questions left in the dirt.

Unfinished would be the word I'd use to describe this book.

Or perhaps, wasted potential.

The time travel element was what drew me in. There was a reason that the weeping angels were my favourite Doctor Who creation - there's just something eerily exciting about having my brain messed with by the ravages of time while paradoxically remaining in the same place. The difference is, the weeping angels had a purpose, a motive, some sort rationality. Harper Curtis didn't.

Why does the house give Harper the power to open its door into different eras? Why the 'shining girls' - girls with stunning future potential - had to die? Why them? Why did the house choose Harper? Is he a slave to his own compulsion or is the house influencing him in some way? Why did Kirby survive the attack and not another one of the shining girls?

Well, we never find out.

It's a shame, because this book is quite ironically bursting with potential. There were numerous opportunities for the author to discuss historical issues such as the role of women in American society over time, but there is no evidence of any such meaningful explorations. The girls that Harper must travel through time to find and kill, are bland and based on a selection of archetypes with fixed personality traits and no additional interest.

Kirby is the one shining girl that has personality but unfortunately lacks significant likability. I listened to the audiobook on Scribd, narrated by a relatively deep male voice, making Kirby's dialogue sound like an obnoxious mockery of the female voice. I'm not sure if this skewed my perception of Kirby's character, it may well have done, but I found her personality very egotistical and just wholeheartedly annoying.

I believe there was a missed opportunity to make the main female protagonist a different shining girl who perhaps lived in 50s Chicago for example, or at least in a time period of the past instead of modern day. This would have been a better way to explore more in-depth and significant themes as mentioned before, and I think the character would therefore be far more interesting and profound.

This may sound odd, but in my head I compare this book to Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The reason for this: Golding utilises setting and molds it into a character. This of course is not the only example in literature, but one that's stuck with me since high school English because of how well it worked. In Lord of the Flies, the island itself becomes a symbolic character; a utopian foundation upon which the boys could create a society from scratch and the only parental figure present in the whole story.

A similar thing could have been done with the house in The Shining Girls, which somehow has the power to assist Harper with his time travel, and provides him with the locations of the girls he must kill and the ability to see them shine. However, as mentioned earlier, we never discover how or why the house exists or has these powers. Perhaps if there had been some kind of substance to make the house a character itself, my question marks would have been replaced with the desirable answers.

It also would have been interesting to see Harper develop some kind of relationship with one of the shining girls, maybe Kirby herself, making him unable to kill her. Inevitably there would be consequences for breaking the circle and defying his "duty", but maybe Harper's arc would have been, well, actually existent, with him changing from a psycho killer to a man accepting his mistakes.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book. But I won't read it again, and I have an unrelenting urge to rewrite it myself. There is so much potential with The Shining Girls that it's ironically a shining girl itself, but this time, Beukes was the killer and now it no longer shines.

It is absolutely no doubt a page-turner, and if that's all you're looking for, then I think it could be a good read for you. If not, and like me you prefer books with more substance and reason, it's perhaps best to find a better alternative.

2/5

★★✰✰✰

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