A review by juushika
The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

3.0

3.5 stars. A strange little girl grows up under strict rules, because every time she bleeds she spawns a copy of herself who eventually tries to kill her. This has a first person frame narrative with a decent function but a bland voice. But the central narrative, third person, cold and almost clinical in tone, high-concept brutal action in content, is a hell of a ride. It's grim sometimes to excess and wraps up too many elements too neatly in the fourth act, but it's aggressively strange, pushing the speculative elements just that extra bit further particularly re: what it means to "bleed," how limited or ineffectual are the rules. And the brutality is contrasted by slivers of broken intimacy between the protagonist and her doubles. Those indefinable, secret spaces and unanswered questions about personhood are almost but not quite overshadowed by the violence, and they're what make this work for me. It's not flawless, I don't love the sequel, but this is well worth the single-sitting read.