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A review by sarieinsea
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan
4.0
I really, really enjoyed this book. It's kind of hard to explain the tone - I think the word I'd use is "unsettling" because you never really know which characters, if any, you can trust or what exactly happened. The narrative shifts each chapter, so that you hear the perspectives of each of the women at the Farnsworth school, but you never hear from the soldier, Johnny. I kept changing my mind about the characters and what I thought was going on in the school as I read, but by the end you can draw a pretty strong conclusion about what happened.
The story is simple - one of the younger students at a ladies' school in Virginia finds an injured Union soldier in the woods nearby and brings him back to the house for care. The stern headmistress, Martha, is initially very apprehensive to allow him to stay, but ultimately decides to tend to his wounds and try to nurse him to health before turning him in to Confederate soldiers. While Johnny is recovering, he forms connections with each of the ladies in the house, the youngest of whom is ten. This causes them to begin to argue and turn against one another, and things slowly descend into chaos after two of the older girls fight over him and the physical brawl results in his leg breaking and his condition drastically worsening. Martha decides that the only way to preserve his life is to amputate his leg at the knee, which she does (in a fairly gruesome scene and without Johnny's consent).
After that, as they say, all hell breaks loose. Johnny begins to exact revenge on the ladies, and it becomes clear that no one is trustworthy, none of them are incapable of cruelty, and the situation isn't going to resolve itself neatly.
This is definitely a slow burn, but it's a fascinating and chilling read.
The story is simple - one of the younger students at a ladies' school in Virginia finds an injured Union soldier in the woods nearby and brings him back to the house for care. The stern headmistress, Martha, is initially very apprehensive to allow him to stay, but ultimately decides to tend to his wounds and try to nurse him to health before turning him in to Confederate soldiers. While Johnny is recovering, he forms connections with each of the ladies in the house, the youngest of whom is ten. This causes them to begin to argue and turn against one another, and things slowly descend into chaos after two of the older girls fight over him and the physical brawl results in his leg breaking and his condition drastically worsening. Martha decides that the only way to preserve his life is to amputate his leg at the knee, which she does (in a fairly gruesome scene and without Johnny's consent).
After that, as they say, all hell breaks loose. Johnny begins to exact revenge on the ladies, and it becomes clear that no one is trustworthy, none of them are incapable of cruelty, and the situation isn't going to resolve itself neatly.
This is definitely a slow burn, but it's a fascinating and chilling read.