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sterling8 's review for:
The Maidens
by Alex Michaelides
Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.
I haven't yet read "The Silent Patient", the author's very famous first book, although my book club will be reading it in September. I was curious about this one because of the first book's reputation and because I'm a sucker for both Greek mythology and creepy university books, which I understood were in this one.
So, the main character, Mariana, is a group therapist. This interested me because I used to do that for a living myself. Mariana is grieving the loss of her husband, who accidentally drowned while swimming off the coast of a small Greek island while they were on holiday. At the beginning of the book, Mariana is doing an incredibly poor job of setting boundaries with one of her more disturbed group members. Was this supposed to show me that Mariana was an unreliable narrator? I'm not sure, but it sure made me wonder about her judgement. And I never had reason to re-evaluate my opinion of her judgement upward. There aren't enough clues to really figure out the plot, because we see everything from Mariana's point of view and Mariana is oblivious to so many things. Far too many things for anyone, much less a therapist, to be oblivious to.
Mariana's sort-of-niece Zoe calls her to Cambridge to support her when one of Zoe's friends is murdered. Mariana stays on and sort-of-investigates for various mediocre reasons. She quickly fixates on a charismatic yet creepy professor of classics as the culprit (not a suspect, the culprit) and tries to figure out how to get him to tip his hand. This leads Mariana to getting into dangerous situations and keeping law enforcement untrusting of her. (Stupid law enforcement is rampant in this book.) There are cryptic yet sinister post cards turning up in the possession of more young women who end up dead- it turns into quite the epidemic of dead girls.
All of these girls are part of a group called (by who?) the Maidens, and they are all a little too close to this charismatic yet creepy classics professor. Is there some sort of pagan Greek cult going on? Oh, and in addition to the creepy classics professor, there's another creepy guy refusing to take no for an answer trying to get Mariana into a relationship with him. I get the impression that the author wants us to root for this guy, but no. He seems like a "nice guy" in the worst sense of the phrase to me.
This is really more of a gothic book than a mystery. Mariana is haunted by something that isn't really put into the book until the very end. And the ending doesn't make much sense because it contradicts what we learned early in the book- unless that's Mariana being totally oblivious yet again to something very close to her. There's some neat imagery with shadows, and interesting reference to Persephone and furies, but ultimately that doesn't have much to do with what's happening either. And the book turns on yet another crazy-in-love woman who's been totally brainwashed into being the instrument of destruction for another's goals. And the plot toward these goals doesn't really make any sense.
So, oblivious therapist, crazy woman trope, solution to the mystery that didn't really make sense, and writing that I honestly thought was far more workmanlike than lyrical. This outweighed any mythology and creepy university fun for me and I would not recommend this book.
I haven't yet read "The Silent Patient", the author's very famous first book, although my book club will be reading it in September. I was curious about this one because of the first book's reputation and because I'm a sucker for both Greek mythology and creepy university books, which I understood were in this one.
So, the main character, Mariana, is a group therapist. This interested me because I used to do that for a living myself. Mariana is grieving the loss of her husband, who accidentally drowned while swimming off the coast of a small Greek island while they were on holiday. At the beginning of the book, Mariana is doing an incredibly poor job of setting boundaries with one of her more disturbed group members. Was this supposed to show me that Mariana was an unreliable narrator? I'm not sure, but it sure made me wonder about her judgement. And I never had reason to re-evaluate my opinion of her judgement upward. There aren't enough clues to really figure out the plot, because we see everything from Mariana's point of view and Mariana is oblivious to so many things. Far too many things for anyone, much less a therapist, to be oblivious to.
Mariana's sort-of-niece Zoe calls her to Cambridge to support her when one of Zoe's friends is murdered. Mariana stays on and sort-of-investigates for various mediocre reasons. She quickly fixates on a charismatic yet creepy professor of classics as the culprit (not a suspect, the culprit) and tries to figure out how to get him to tip his hand. This leads Mariana to getting into dangerous situations and keeping law enforcement untrusting of her. (Stupid law enforcement is rampant in this book.) There are cryptic yet sinister post cards turning up in the possession of more young women who end up dead- it turns into quite the epidemic of dead girls.
All of these girls are part of a group called (by who?) the Maidens, and they are all a little too close to this charismatic yet creepy classics professor. Is there some sort of pagan Greek cult going on? Oh, and in addition to the creepy classics professor, there's another creepy guy refusing to take no for an answer trying to get Mariana into a relationship with him. I get the impression that the author wants us to root for this guy, but no. He seems like a "nice guy" in the worst sense of the phrase to me.
This is really more of a gothic book than a mystery. Mariana is haunted by something that isn't really put into the book until the very end. And the ending doesn't make much sense because it contradicts what we learned early in the book- unless that's Mariana being totally oblivious yet again to something very close to her. There's some neat imagery with shadows, and interesting reference to Persephone and furies, but ultimately that doesn't have much to do with what's happening either. And the book turns on yet another crazy-in-love woman who's been totally brainwashed into being the instrument of destruction for another's goals. And the plot toward these goals doesn't really make any sense.
So, oblivious therapist, crazy woman trope, solution to the mystery that didn't really make sense, and writing that I honestly thought was far more workmanlike than lyrical. This outweighed any mythology and creepy university fun for me and I would not recommend this book.