A review by thebooktrail88
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan

3.0

Visit the locations in the novel

An interesting book this one. It was good but not great and the pacing although should have been slow building was a bit too slow in the beginning. It’s quite a disturbing read in many ways – a solider arriving injured at a house in Virginia only to be tendered to by women who have no idea of the world outside. They at first feel threatened but it soon becomes clear that it might be him who should be afraid.

There are several girls who give their viewpoint of the events which unfold and I admit to getting a little confused over who was speaking although each chapter is signaled clearly. Sometimes it felt a little repetitive as one girl told the story of another in a different way. But on the whole, the tension, ghostly sequences ,sense of foreboding and danger runs throughout with only a few dips. There are some uncomfortable moments as some of these girls are under age and they are exposed to so much. I wasn't too keen on these moments.

The setting is what makes this book – a small plantation house with a mixed race woman, the house slave and white students in the middle of the Civil War and all that entails. The heat, the oppression, the sexuality and the sense of how on earth this is going to end kept me reading. And those frissons of excitement and the unknown, the mouse in a cage of cats, the mouse which fits back and then oh that ending. I think fewer characters and narrators would have been much more effective in the long run and a shorter novel.