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A review by yashwwrites
The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund
2.0
When I started reading The Crow Girl I couldn’t believe that it was written by two men. The main characters Jeanette Kihlberg (The Detective) and Sofia Zetterlund (The Psychologist) have their uniquely female challenges described with astonishing precision. It’s hard to imagine writers having this degree of insight without being of the same gender.
Even though Jeanette is a competent detective, she constantly contends with her superiors patronising her. Even though her male counterparts respect her, she worries her professionalism could be viewed as domineering.
Through Sofia, the reader has a front row seat to a show called ‘The Evil That Men Do.’ Through her, we get to see the underbelly of sexual abuse that The Crow Girl’s Sweden is filled with. Through her, we get to feel the psychological torture of surviving pedophilia and incest.
In the beginning, I really enjoyed how this duo came together. In the beginning, I couldn’t help but feel this was an alternate version of True Detective. Police procedure, crime scenes, and criminal analysis really fascinate me. But after completing the entire 768 page novel, I feel nothing more than relief from finishing something unpleasant.
That’s not to say that the writing is an intellectual challenge. On the contrary, the writing is so tepid that I wonder if there weren’t major losses due to two people putting it together. And after that, the original Swedish was translated into English. Maybe a lot of colour got washed out in the process. The best way I can put it: the writing is like salted chips.
You munch on them and in the beginning its fine but then you keep munching on them and you can’t help but feel like the inside of your mouth is turning into sand. Without giving approval to purple prose, I like my words and sentences with flavour to them. If someone told me this book was written by a program, I would be impressed by the program’s transcription.
And I strongly deny the Sunday Times testimonial that was on my cover: ‘A compulsive page-turner.’ From a plot stand point, I felt perpetually blue balled. Every time the story gained momentum, the book would go into flashback. And these flashbacks start off with such irritating fogginess, that you as the reader must continually strain themselves to get into flow again. This doesn't stop (as it should) after the first third. It keeps happening. All the way to the end.
And although these diversions contain opportunities for empathy - as a crime thriller reader I just want to know how we catch the bad guys.
And that’s where the characters flop. This is a 768 page serial killer investigation, and only in the last 100 pages you know who the actual killer is. Emphasis on ‘actual killer’ because you’re lead to believe its two other people. And then all those flashbacks finally come full circle. I’m all for humanizing criminals. I think there’s only so much depth in David Lynch-esque evil. But when little boys are mummified and their genitals dismembered, you as the reader are hoping for some comeuppance. Otherwise all the violence feels gratuitous. You come out of this dirty, not vindicated or full of vengeance.
I really did want to like The Crow Girl. I loved Jeanette. I loved Sofia. I loved the exploration of undocumented lives being expendable. I loved having a window into the prevalence of pedophilia in a superficially civilised society. And as always, I love crime scenes. How you get to them. How you explore them. How they’re created and how they’re solved. But when I ask myself, who’s the audience for The Crow Girl? The answer is no one.
Even though Jeanette is a competent detective, she constantly contends with her superiors patronising her. Even though her male counterparts respect her, she worries her professionalism could be viewed as domineering.
Through Sofia, the reader has a front row seat to a show called ‘The Evil That Men Do.’ Through her, we get to see the underbelly of sexual abuse that The Crow Girl’s Sweden is filled with. Through her, we get to feel the psychological torture of surviving pedophilia and incest.
In the beginning, I really enjoyed how this duo came together. In the beginning, I couldn’t help but feel this was an alternate version of True Detective. Police procedure, crime scenes, and criminal analysis really fascinate me. But after completing the entire 768 page novel, I feel nothing more than relief from finishing something unpleasant.
That’s not to say that the writing is an intellectual challenge. On the contrary, the writing is so tepid that I wonder if there weren’t major losses due to two people putting it together. And after that, the original Swedish was translated into English. Maybe a lot of colour got washed out in the process. The best way I can put it: the writing is like salted chips.
You munch on them and in the beginning its fine but then you keep munching on them and you can’t help but feel like the inside of your mouth is turning into sand. Without giving approval to purple prose, I like my words and sentences with flavour to them. If someone told me this book was written by a program, I would be impressed by the program’s transcription.
And I strongly deny the Sunday Times testimonial that was on my cover: ‘A compulsive page-turner.’ From a plot stand point, I felt perpetually blue balled. Every time the story gained momentum, the book would go into flashback. And these flashbacks start off with such irritating fogginess, that you as the reader must continually strain themselves to get into flow again. This doesn't stop (as it should) after the first third. It keeps happening. All the way to the end.
And although these diversions contain opportunities for empathy - as a crime thriller reader I just want to know how we catch the bad guys.
And that’s where the characters flop. This is a 768 page serial killer investigation, and only in the last 100 pages you know who the actual killer is. Emphasis on ‘actual killer’ because you’re lead to believe its two other people. And then all those flashbacks finally come full circle. I’m all for humanizing criminals. I think there’s only so much depth in David Lynch-esque evil. But when little boys are mummified and their genitals dismembered, you as the reader are hoping for some comeuppance. Otherwise all the violence feels gratuitous. You come out of this dirty, not vindicated or full of vengeance.
I really did want to like The Crow Girl. I loved Jeanette. I loved Sofia. I loved the exploration of undocumented lives being expendable. I loved having a window into the prevalence of pedophilia in a superficially civilised society. And as always, I love crime scenes. How you get to them. How you explore them. How they’re created and how they’re solved. But when I ask myself, who’s the audience for The Crow Girl? The answer is no one.