The Shining Girls: A Novel Paperback – January 14, 2014

Before anything else, let me say this book is excellently written with fantastic characters that feel real to the reader. It's a story that will absolutely hold your interest, and is hard to put down. All that being said, it's also extremely disturbing, and dark on a level you rarely find. Because it's so wonderfully written, you feel the darkness in a way can be difficult to come to terms with. The only thing I've ever read that gave me similar feelings is "The Lovely Bones " by Alice Seibold. If you can handle that, then this is a book for you.

3.5 stars rounded upThe Shining Girls is a mix of time-travel scifi and serial-killer crime fiction, but don't believe the blurb written by Matt Haig on the back cover that says it's a cross between The Time Traveler's Wife and The Silence of the Lambs. Even if, in your wildest imagination, you could mix the two, you still don't come anywhere close to The Shining Girls. Yes, there is time travel and yes there is a nasty serial killer out there, but this killer already knows who he's going to kill and visits his victims beforehand -- and even leaves them a little something to hold on to until he comes back. Bought exclusively for its summer-read/beach potential, the book didn't let me down.In this story, time runs along different chronologies. The serial killer in this novel, Harper Curtis, has his own time line -- he jumps in and out of time from the 1930s until 1993 -- and then there's the timeline of one his victims, Kirby, whom Harper mistakenly leaves alive after a brutal attack. Third, there's the real, historical chronology, time and changing attitudes moving forward in history. It may seem confusing at first, but it makes sense here. As the novel opens, Harper Curtis is running from an angry mob in a Depression-era Hooverville. He runs into a shack, takes a coat and leaves; in one of the pockets is a key. He is drawn to a mysterious house in the city of Chicago, a jumping-off point into time; a place where his destiny, and those of a group of young women he doesn't even know, is literally written on the walls. The women are the shining girls of the title, and he is compelled to track them through time and ultimately to snuff out their glowing potential in the world. Harper visits each one long before he kills them, leaving some token; years later when it's a woman's time to die, he leaves something else with each of them, something from one of the other victims. One of them, Kirby Mazrachi, escapes from a savage attack and her destiny with death, but she is left with both physical and emotional scars. She becomes fixated on finding the person who did this to her, determined enough to the point where she becomes an intern on a newspaper that covered the case because of the access to the paper's archives. She has caught on to the pattern of artifacts left behind, but trying to find someone who will listen to her is pretty much impossible, as is trying to pin down one specific person whom she knows is responsible for a number of other brutal attacks.On a surface level I suppose you could read this book as another serial-killer novel with a time-traveling gimmick as a hook, but to me it goes well beyond that sort of simplified explanation. Harper is figuratively plucking the wings off of women, killing them just as they are starting to make a difference in their present; he's also cutting off their potential for making a difference in the futures of others. Thinking about that, it seems to me that the author is not only talking about men who feel compelled to keep women down, but also about victims of violence -- where every life taken represents a loss of future possibilities. The crazy time loops in this novel help to point out that although time moves on, violence against women has always been, is, and always will be part of our existence, with effects that ripple ever outward over time.Overall, it's a good enough novel, one that kept me intrigued, but there were parts that dragged and I had to read it twice to figure out the House. I'm also not big on graphic violence, which there is plenty of in this book; I get the point -- these were living people with personalities, lives, parents, loved ones -- but sometimes too much is just too much. The ending, well, since I can't talk about that here, suffice it to say I think the action-packed empowerment statement was a little too obvious, but I know lots of people who'll disagree. This book is getting some excellent reviews, but not everyone is loving it -- I'm somewhere in the middle of all of that. I'll recommend it as a good summer read -- but read it slowly so you don't have to go through it a second time like I did.

The Shining Girls is a fascinating read: it’s got time travel, a ruthless serial killer, a girl who survived being disemboweled, and a time travel logic that hits each point in just the right order. The Shining Girls is fun and, unlike many of the time travel stories I’ve read, not metaphysically weighed down by incoherent sciences. Beukes presents readers with a house that can time travel, and that’s about as scientific as it gets. However, as enjoyable as this simplicity is, it does hinder the novel when it comes to character depth – an integral part of a story when one opts to forego the scientific route.Beukes took an interesting approach with regards to her portrayal of the serial killer, Harper. Rather than creating a mystery surrounding this character, Beukes instead plunges readers headfirst into his story, effectively dissipating any and all mystery that, I feel, could have created a very tense, more engaging story. We learn, as chapters dedicated to him begin to pile up, that he’s misogynistic, has a disturbing murder-fetish, and isn’t the best of planners. I see what Beukes was doing here, opening the mind of the serial killer up to readers for some semblance of examination, yet I’m not entirely convinced that it was done enough finesse. Too much is revealed about Harper, which in turn negatively affects the more engaging chapters of the story – those revolving around Kirby’s manhunt.Kirby is the novel’s protagonist. Spunky, college aged, and deeply scarred (literally), Kirby exists in the early 90′s and, unlike all of the other “shining girls,” manages to survive a brutal attack by Harper. She joins up with a journalist, Dan, as they try to uncover who is behind the grisly attacks that have been taking the lives of women (including almost Kirby) throughout the decades. This is where the story would find it’s meatiest hold, however due to entire chapters dedicated to Harper’s rampage, all sense of mystery is lost and the detective work that Kirby puts into her investigation seems pointless to readers, who know exactly what she’s going to find because we read it already. And what I feel should have been an engaging mystery full of twists and turns becomes a fairly straightforward cat-and-mouse game. Entertaining, yes, but with little engagement.That said, the novel is still well written, with plenty of beautiful Chicago imagery throughout several decades. Beukes’ language never falters, creating tones that ride the story’s multiple settings. Lines like: “The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless with a terrible fury all its own,” give the novel its nuanced feelings of confusion, matching those of the characters who experience the terror of time all in their own ways. It’s certainly an interesting book, one that I would recommend if you’re looking for something quick to read that doesn’t require much brainpower to process.