what could be more romantic? what’s as perfect as a girl stopped dead, midformation? girl as blank slate. girl as reflection of your own desires, unmarred by her own. girl as sacrifice to the idea of girl. girl as a series of childhood photographs, all marked with the aura of girl who will die young, as if even the third grade portrait photographer should have seen it on her face, that this was a girl who would only ever be a girl.

the whole point of the dead girl story is the persistent deadness of the girl — her silence, her absence. she is the ghost that haunts the narrative; the story is not about her, anymore, because she is not here, not really. she is gone before it ever starts.

which is all to say — so, rebecca makkai has seen promising young woman, huh! this book operates within a very familiar formula, which isn’t a bad thing; i thought it struck the necessary notes very cleanly, and she’s obviously a great writer on a sentence level. but since it’s so familiar, it’s easy to compare, and frankly, it’s not as good as True Story, which just blew me away with its ambivalence on the same themes. the moments that felt most effective for me really leaned into bodie’s complicity (“you have to understand that with the music underneath, this was quite powerful”) and i think to really hammer that home, it needed to reckon more with that complicity.

i put on my most convincing teacher voice and i said, “the back and forth on this will make it a better podcast. remember, we want questions. this raises such great questions.”

also i have to say the last chapter didn’t click for me, i would’ve swapped it with the penultimate (that last line! sometimes a last line SHOULD be heavy handed!) – but i am a cynic and that’s just a stylistic preference. still: a good story well told, perfect for book clubs imo

this wasn’t even a question of believing a survivor, as thalia had never said anything about you. well, and she hadn’t survived.