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A review by ridgewaygirl
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
4.0
This is the story of Cassie, as seen through the eyes of her best friend, JuJu. The two girls were inseparable, and during the summer before they began middle school, they wandered all over their small Massachusetts town and the woods around it, but beginning in middle school, the girls drift apart, a process that JuJu finds confusing and painful. She's been put in all the advanced classes, while Cassie falls in with the crowd of popular kids who party. From a distance, JuJu watches Cassie change and when she gains a stepfather, the speed at which she embraces a risky lifestyle increases.
Messud has done a good job in writing her adolescent characters. JuJu is intelligent and insightful, but she's also full of the drama of the situation. The book is told from JuJu's POV and the author restricts the level of information the reader is given to what JuJu knows, which means we are getting Cassie's story in random sudden lumps and through hearsay, which was surprisingly effective, even as it meant that a lot of the questions remain unanswered.
Messud has done a good job in writing her adolescent characters. JuJu is intelligent and insightful, but she's also full of the drama of the situation. The book is told from JuJu's POV and the author restricts the level of information the reader is given to what JuJu knows, which means we are getting Cassie's story in random sudden lumps and through hearsay, which was surprisingly effective, even as it meant that a lot of the questions remain unanswered.