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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
3.5. I liked learning about the UP in Michigan while wondering the fate of Helena.
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
”Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
-Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
This book embodies this quote and “daddy issues,” and it’s pretty annoying. Sure, it’s the story of a daughter tracking her wily, sadistic, prison-escapee of an Ojibwa father through the Michigan marshes to save her family, but it’s heavily interspersed with those despondent flashbacks to the life she lived in captivity with that man and the wife he kidnapped and (along with his daughter) despises. It less a thriller and more a slog through a messed up, Stockholm Syndrome’d girl’s mind, and it’s hard to read.
There’s a burst of action at the end and satisfying closure along with Helena’s changed state of mind about who her mom was and what she went through. But it feels like too little too late. Helena spends entirely too much of the book waving knives at good people and shilling for her dad, whom she knows is cruel.
The annoying part is narrator Helena in the present day has been escaped for years with a whole new family, yet she constantly defends or fondly remembers her father and expresses spite towards her mother. I get that trauma recovery is hard and messy, but come ON. Especially when she experiences her father’s cruelty firsthand, and with how bad he gets by the end of the book, she should’ve realized she wasn’t getting out of this any better than her mom. She doesn’t even have empathy for her father‘s victims until she is forced to confront how her father’s actions would harm her or her family.
There’s something about girlhood that draws insecure men, and there’s something about womanhood that repulses them. When a “traditional” man has a kid who looks up to him like he hung the moon and a slavish wife he can intimidate into keeping house, what else could he ask for? When a daughter idolizes her “good cop” dad and picks up all her cues from him, she learns to look with contempt on her “bad cop” mom the same way the father despises his wife.
I’ve been through a similar situation with the abusive, controlling, isolating father and fawning, beaten-down, subservient mother. It’s hard to undo these patterns of thought. But when you’re both victims, why the hell would you hate your fellow victim more than your collective abuser?
Maybe it’s also a consequence of growing up, but when I read stuff like this I tend to relate more with the mother than the kids. Maybe because I would be devastated if my life ended like that via sudden immersion into an isolated lifestyle with a man I was expected to serve and obey, never mind the trauma from being kidnapped and raped, and your own daughter growing up to be just like her dad.
Idk. Trauma survival and recovery is hard. This is a 2 star book but the immersive writing gets it another.
-Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
This book embodies this quote and “daddy issues,” and it’s pretty annoying. Sure, it’s the story of a daughter tracking her wily, sadistic, prison-escapee of an Ojibwa father through the Michigan marshes to save her family, but it’s heavily interspersed with those despondent flashbacks to the life she lived in captivity with that man and the wife he kidnapped and (along with his daughter) despises. It less a thriller and more a slog through a messed up, Stockholm Syndrome’d girl’s mind, and it’s hard to read.
There’s a burst of action at the end and satisfying closure along with Helena’s changed state of mind about who her mom was and what she went through. But it feels like too little too late. Helena spends entirely too much of the book waving knives at good people and shilling for her dad, whom she knows is cruel.
The annoying part is narrator Helena in the present day has been escaped for years with a whole new family, yet she constantly defends or fondly remembers her father and expresses spite towards her mother. I get that trauma recovery is hard and messy, but come ON. Especially when she experiences her father’s cruelty firsthand, and with how bad he gets by the end of the book, she should’ve realized she wasn’t getting out of this any better than her mom. She doesn’t even have empathy for her father‘s victims until she is forced to confront how her father’s actions would harm her or her family.
There’s something about girlhood that draws insecure men, and there’s something about womanhood that repulses them. When a “traditional” man has a kid who looks up to him like he hung the moon and a slavish wife he can intimidate into keeping house, what else could he ask for? When a daughter idolizes her “good cop” dad and picks up all her cues from him, she learns to look with contempt on her “bad cop” mom the same way the father despises his wife.
I’ve been through a similar situation with the abusive, controlling, isolating father and fawning, beaten-down, subservient mother. It’s hard to undo these patterns of thought. But when you’re both victims, why the hell would you hate your fellow victim more than your collective abuser?
Maybe it’s also a consequence of growing up, but when I read stuff like this I tend to relate more with the mother than the kids. Maybe because I would be devastated if my life ended like that via sudden immersion into an isolated lifestyle with a man I was expected to serve and obey, never mind the trauma from being kidnapped and raped, and your own daughter growing up to be just like her dad.
Idk. Trauma survival and recovery is hard. This is a 2 star book but the immersive writing gets it another.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Marsh Kings Daughter follows the double timeline of Helena, one where she is the product of the abduction of her mother by her father living in a cabin in a marsh, the other where is an adult living a regular life with her family until she learns her father has escaped prison and she is the only one who will be able to find him.
I got this book because I saw it being compared A LOT to Where the Crawdads Sing except, the only similarity is that they both take place in a marsh. I’m not sure if it was just my expectations being too high going into this book or I’ve been reading so much everything is just seeming mediocre to me, but I did not enjoy it. I didn’t feel like I was in any suspense throughout the book. Considering Helena was the child of kidnap and rape, I felt no connection to her (seeing as she had a barely existent relationship with her kidnapped mother). I enjoyed the bits of Ojibway culture we got to see (mainly because that is my culture and something I wasn’t expecting) but other than that, this was just a meh book for me.
I got this book because I saw it being compared A LOT to Where the Crawdads Sing except, the only similarity is that they both take place in a marsh. I’m not sure if it was just my expectations being too high going into this book or I’ve been reading so much everything is just seeming mediocre to me, but I did not enjoy it. I didn’t feel like I was in any suspense throughout the book. Considering Helena was the child of kidnap and rape, I felt no connection to her (seeing as she had a barely existent relationship with her kidnapped mother). I enjoyed the bits of Ojibway culture we got to see (mainly because that is my culture and something I wasn’t expecting) but other than that, this was just a meh book for me.
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes