A review by marie_kreuter
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

2.0

I really expected and wanted to like this book. According to the description, it’s exactly the kind of story I love: one about the intimacy of adolescence and the inevitable dissolution of the intense friendships one makes during this time. And while the author is obviously skilled—it is beautifully written—the story is told almost primarily in exposition, and by the least interesting character in the book. There’s a line I love on page 145: “But our friendship was, at the same time, like a city you hadn’t visited in a long time, where you know the streets by heart but the shops and restaurants have changed, so you can find your way from the church to the town square, no problem, but you don’t know where to get ice cream or a decent sandwich.” Lovely, right? Sadly, i feel it also characterizes the book as a whole: We’re given the skeleton, maybe some muscles, tendons, an internal organ or two, of these two girls’ lives, including some present-action scenes (the first half of the book is much more scene-heavy than the second), but as the story continues, it drops almost exclusively into exposition, with the less interesting character explaining (often second-hand!) and musing over the dramatic unraveling of her first best friend’s life. And because of this lack of present action and closeness to the story, we’re left without a beating heart, without a visage, so that I understand that this story exists, but it’s hard to care, especially about the narrator, who I felt I knew so little about by the end of the story. And if I know so little about her, why would her heartbreak matter to me?

I vacillated between two and three stars on this one, because I want to acknowledge the beauty of Messud’s writing, but I landed on two. Because, man, was I disappointed by this story.