The Drowning Girl

Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Drowning Girl Cover

The Drowning Girl

carlajpatterson
4/8/2013
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Having grown up in a family full of schizophrenics, I was unable to read this objectively. Imp is SO not a schizophrenic that I was irked by that aspect of the book from the first chapter.

Also, Kiernan's style of writing in this book was equally irksome to me... Imp talks about not having gone to college but her 'internal process' is so fueled by the kind of language that freshmen writers use that I wasn't too thrilled with that, either. The writing, over all, was pretentious and self-conscious to my ear and that made it difficult for me to immerse myself in the story.

Last, but not least, the protagonist keeps coming across attractive women in need and says she brought the naked one(s) home with her to protect them. This is another thing I found tiresome about the story - if people's sexual fantasies show up in their writing, I prefer it to be a little more exciting, satisfying, or interesting. For me, these occurrences were none of the above.

I read this book because it was the selection for a book discussion group I am in and the comments people made about the book, some of them very moving and interesting, were twice as good, to me, as the writing in the book. Because of that, I didn't feel it was a waste of my time and money to read it.

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