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thewitchmorgana's review
3.0
A harrowing read. I picked this up from my digital library at random, because I like the narrator. I expected psycho thriller, and I got slow, introspective piece about Stockholm Syndrome. Still, it was pretty good, and the prose is lovely.
girlwithherheadinabook's review
4.0
NB - 4 stars is in appreciation for the skill involved in the writing. I did not 'really like it'.
This came out the same year that Room did. I read Room without too many difficulties because Emma Donoghue never steps outside of her child narrator. We only see what Jack sees and Jack's Ma makes sure to cover his eyes (and thus ours) from the true horror of their situation. With Forgetting Zoe, there is no such filter. First of all, we meet Thurman Hayes. It is a cliche to show how the once sweet child could become a monster yet films such as The Phantom Menace show just how hard it is to depict the development of evil convincingly. We are never in any doubt as to what he will become - the brief foreword describes the local reaction to what he'd done - nobody saw it coming but nobody showed any real surprise. Thurman was a loner - he had few real friends, his father loathed him and his mother ... well. His mother hadn't even wanted to be down in Arizona in the first place.
Over the years, Thurman grows stronger, grows angrier and meaner - his inability to relate to others inevitably leads to frustration; we watch wincing as he makes his first kill, hides the evidence, gets away with it. His parents fade, Thurman is left alone. And so he takes a trip up towards Canada, to his mother's place of birth. While there, he steals a ten year-old girl. Zoe is so very full of life - she is like Ariel, a child of air and water and wind. Robinson paints Zoe's world as almost too beautiful, the sky all-encompassing - a stark contrast to Thurman's claustrophobic childhood. Zoe's mother Ingrid is alone in the world and sometimes impatient but she loves her daughter - Zoe's vanishing jars - we do not see it, Ingrid does not believe it and we do not know what has happened until suddenly Robinson catapults us back to Thurman's world and suddenly everything is very dark.
There are contrasts to the myth of Demeter and Persephone as Zoe struggles in the dark world of Thurman's bunker while her mother withers and shrivels in the world above ground. I always loved that story as a child, the idea of the mother searching for her daughter - there are too many stories of angry fathers but mothers have a power all of their own. Here though we see the mundane reality of Ingrid's grief as she has to face the grinding horror of not knowing what has become of her baby. Behind it all is the long-gone betrayal by Zoe's lost father, her loneliness in the world - her life is as wintry as that of Demeter and her daughter cannot escape to comfort her.
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/review-forgetting-zoe-ray-robinson.html#more
This came out the same year that Room did. I read Room without too many difficulties because Emma Donoghue never steps outside of her child narrator. We only see what Jack sees and Jack's Ma makes sure to cover his eyes (and thus ours) from the true horror of their situation. With Forgetting Zoe, there is no such filter. First of all, we meet Thurman Hayes. It is a cliche to show how the once sweet child could become a monster yet films such as The Phantom Menace show just how hard it is to depict the development of evil convincingly. We are never in any doubt as to what he will become - the brief foreword describes the local reaction to what he'd done - nobody saw it coming but nobody showed any real surprise. Thurman was a loner - he had few real friends, his father loathed him and his mother ... well. His mother hadn't even wanted to be down in Arizona in the first place.
Over the years, Thurman grows stronger, grows angrier and meaner - his inability to relate to others inevitably leads to frustration; we watch wincing as he makes his first kill, hides the evidence, gets away with it. His parents fade, Thurman is left alone. And so he takes a trip up towards Canada, to his mother's place of birth. While there, he steals a ten year-old girl. Zoe is so very full of life - she is like Ariel, a child of air and water and wind. Robinson paints Zoe's world as almost too beautiful, the sky all-encompassing - a stark contrast to Thurman's claustrophobic childhood. Zoe's mother Ingrid is alone in the world and sometimes impatient but she loves her daughter - Zoe's vanishing jars - we do not see it, Ingrid does not believe it and we do not know what has happened until suddenly Robinson catapults us back to Thurman's world and suddenly everything is very dark.
There are contrasts to the myth of Demeter and Persephone as Zoe struggles in the dark world of Thurman's bunker while her mother withers and shrivels in the world above ground. I always loved that story as a child, the idea of the mother searching for her daughter - there are too many stories of angry fathers but mothers have a power all of their own. Here though we see the mundane reality of Ingrid's grief as she has to face the grinding horror of not knowing what has become of her baby. Behind it all is the long-gone betrayal by Zoe's lost father, her loneliness in the world - her life is as wintry as that of Demeter and her daughter cannot escape to comfort her.
For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/review-forgetting-zoe-ray-robinson.html#more
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