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A review by poachedeggs
Fury by Shirley Marr
2.0
Shirley Marr seems like a really interesting, likeable author, and I was looking forward to reading this debut novel of hers about a spoilt rich girl.
Marr uses the flashback/flash-forward technique to dizzying effect, switching rapidly from Eliza Boans's interrogation by a good-looking psychologist to her recollection of her friendships with the two girls in her clique and her encounters with the 'new' girl in the school, and back.
This book reminded me a lot of [b:Some Girls Are|6624871|Some Girls Are|Courtney Summers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1317791700s/6624871.jpg|6819111] in that it is a story about vicious, self-centred rich girls... but the heart-pounding pace of Summers's book seems to be missing in Marr's, even if the latter is about something much more sensational - murder.
I felt that Marr had a lot of ideas that were sometimes awkwardly inserted into the narrative (reminding me of some of my students' narrative writing) - the presence of a mysterious love interest, for instance, who flits in and out of the story, and with whom the generation of chemistry just does not seem possible; and the token career-minded parent whose relationship with her daughter is deeply dysfunctional. The whole narrative also seems to take place in a weird vacuum - while Summers's high school world seems awfully real, Marr's 'gated community' seems oddly sci-fi-ish, striking a discordant note in what I'd expected to be a contemporary novel.
So much could have been done with the character and the plot, but in the end, even the grand revelation fell flat.
The fact that the copy-editor did a horrendous job (there are several typographical errors in this edition) also didn't help.
Marr uses the flashback/flash-forward technique to dizzying effect, switching rapidly from Eliza Boans's interrogation by a good-looking psychologist to her recollection of her friendships with the two girls in her clique and her encounters with the 'new' girl in the school, and back.
This book reminded me a lot of [b:Some Girls Are|6624871|Some Girls Are|Courtney Summers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1317791700s/6624871.jpg|6819111] in that it is a story about vicious, self-centred rich girls... but the heart-pounding pace of Summers's book seems to be missing in Marr's, even if the latter is about something much more sensational - murder.
I felt that Marr had a lot of ideas that were sometimes awkwardly inserted into the narrative (reminding me of some of my students' narrative writing) - the presence of a mysterious love interest, for instance, who flits in and out of the story, and with whom the generation of chemistry just does not seem possible; and the token career-minded parent whose relationship with her daughter is deeply dysfunctional. The whole narrative also seems to take place in a weird vacuum - while Summers's high school world seems awfully real, Marr's 'gated community' seems oddly sci-fi-ish, striking a discordant note in what I'd expected to be a contemporary novel.
So much could have been done with the character and the plot, but in the end, even the grand revelation fell flat.
The fact that the copy-editor did a horrendous job (there are several typographical errors in this edition) also didn't help.