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A review by paigedc
Girl A by Abigail Dean
2.0
A story of a childhood survival of a "house of horrors" turns out to be much more clinical and disjointed than salacious and degenerate. I expected a thrilling, moment-by-moment race a la Room and was left reading something akin to therapist's notes.
Lex Grace is Girl A, the one who survived, the one who helped her siblings escape from her religious fanatic father and her negligent mother. Together, they abused and psychologically tortured most of their children until Lex was able to get out and bring help. Now that her mother has died in prison (her father killed himself in their home), the family house is for sale and Lex must acquire each sibling's permission to use it as she sees fit. The story follows adult Lex in this pursuit, and it also intersperses stories from her childhood and her father's descent into cultish madness of his own creation. That part is difficult to read, but the narrative itself is so choppy that you often must pause in the middle of reading to think about what is happening and if the author has shifted a time period or not. Her writing style is infuriating and leads to zero character development or connection for the reader.
This is the type of story that would be a challenge to read because you would be so invested with the characters and achingly sympathetic toward them and their plight and suffering. It all seems so removed and detached when told this way because of the frenetic jumps and chaotic vignettes. I was hoping for more from this book and think that Girl A will move down to Book Z on my shelf.
Lex Grace is Girl A, the one who survived, the one who helped her siblings escape from her religious fanatic father and her negligent mother. Together, they abused and psychologically tortured most of their children until Lex was able to get out and bring help. Now that her mother has died in prison (her father killed himself in their home), the family house is for sale and Lex must acquire each sibling's permission to use it as she sees fit. The story follows adult Lex in this pursuit, and it also intersperses stories from her childhood and her father's descent into cultish madness of his own creation. That part is difficult to read, but the narrative itself is so choppy that you often must pause in the middle of reading to think about what is happening and if the author has shifted a time period or not. Her writing style is infuriating and leads to zero character development or connection for the reader.
This is the type of story that would be a challenge to read because you would be so invested with the characters and achingly sympathetic toward them and their plight and suffering. It all seems so removed and detached when told this way because of the frenetic jumps and chaotic vignettes. I was hoping for more from this book and think that Girl A will move down to Book Z on my shelf.