Helwig, Maggie - Girls Fall Down
Thu, Nov. 6th, 2008 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterA girl falls down in the Toronto subway; no one is sure if it's the result of chemical terrorism, hysterics, or just random. But as more and more people begin falling down, tension in the city rises and people start getting hurt in retaliation. Meanwhile, Alex is trying to hold his life together even as his old flame Susie-Paul has returned.
I loved Helwig's Where She Was Standing, and I like this, although not quite as much. Part of it was because I'm not sure if I grasped how everything tied together in the end, from Alex's uncertainty about his failing eyesight to Susie-Paul's worries about her twin brother to the general uncertainty of the city as a whole. The language is beautiful, and the imagery is gorgeous, but possibly because the story is centered on uncertainty, sometimes it felt a little static.
On the other hand, Where She Was Standing is also about uncertainty, particularly about the uncertainty of information coming out of East Timor, but that had an overall narrative drive that I felt this book didn't. Possibly it's because Alex and Susie-Paul's search for her brother is less tightly connected to the girls falling down plot, or just because I am generally less interested in the plight of a medical photographer and his new chance at love than I am in the plight of human-rights workers.
Still, I did like it, and there's a quiet beauty to it. Also, it may be something I warm up to on a reread.
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rachelmanija's review
I loved Helwig's Where She Was Standing, and I like this, although not quite as much. Part of it was because I'm not sure if I grasped how everything tied together in the end, from Alex's uncertainty about his failing eyesight to Susie-Paul's worries about her twin brother to the general uncertainty of the city as a whole. The language is beautiful, and the imagery is gorgeous, but possibly because the story is centered on uncertainty, sometimes it felt a little static.
On the other hand, Where She Was Standing is also about uncertainty, particularly about the uncertainty of information coming out of East Timor, but that had an overall narrative drive that I felt this book didn't. Possibly it's because Alex and Susie-Paul's search for her brother is less tightly connected to the girls falling down plot, or just because I am generally less interested in the plight of a medical photographer and his new chance at love than I am in the plight of human-rights workers.
Still, I did like it, and there's a quiet beauty to it. Also, it may be something I warm up to on a reread.
Links:
-
rachelmanija's review
(no subject)
Sat, Nov. 8th, 2008 08:47 am (UTC)I keep meaning to write a longer post about this.
*makes big blinky eyes*