A review by timepetals
Orpheus Builds A Girl by Heather Parry

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

"I'll be your curse, Doctor. I'll haunt you when I'm gone. You won't be able to get rid of me, not ever."

He laughed sadly and agreed, as if it were a joke. 

"Darling, you have been with me for a long time already; you were with me before we even met. It will be the greatest joy of my life to have you with me until I die, until we can be together for the rest of time."

There's no way to rate this, for even by reading you wonder if you are participating in everything this novel attempts to criticize. Someone described it as "Frankenstein" meets "Lolita", and I am very inclined to agree (both theme and narration-wise).

Under the patriarchy, my body is never truly mine. To be a woman is to be reduced to a spectacle, an object men can do with as they please. Assault is masked as true love, for they never intended to hurt, only to protect. And why should a girl protest against one so desperate to save her life? 

Even alluding to this man as Orpheus feels wrong. Yes, Orpheus ventured underground to rescue Eurydice, but he turned around and gave her up, because he wanted to behold her for one last time. Orpheus and Eurydice were in a consensual relationship, one torn apart by time -- this relationship is anything but. 

There's many creepy, icky layers to this novel, made, in turn, even more chilling by the fact that most of it is true. Fictionalized, yes, but heavily borrowing from truth. Which is why even reading it feels like feeding into sensationalism and strong reactions this case is bound to cause. And, yet, it is a story that more people deserve to read, or even hear about just in passing.