The Shining Girls

Book Club for Jan,I'm just going to admit right off the top that this one lost me. I feel stupid for not getting it. Maybe this was too smart for me, too deconstructed. But it isn't deconstructed, and maybe I am wrong and simply doubling down in my ignorance, but this isn't all that smart either. The Shining Girls seemed extremely promising at the outset, here's this very well researched glimpse into 1930s Chicago that leads into a time travel murder-thriller-mystery. This is a book about Harper, a psycho vagrant from the 1930s who stumbles upon a magic time traveling house. After murdering its owner, he explores the house only to feels like he's been in there before. He discovers a trademark psycho-killer room upstairs, there he finds photos of young women and shining pieces of memorabilia connected by lines carved, drawn, and stained into the walls. The house is his vehicle, his mission is to murder all the shining girls across time while sprinkling collectibles at the crime scene. It all goes pretty good at first, he taunts the young version of the women, giving them each a gift he'll come back for. But he messes up, he doesn't kill Kirby. She survives his attack and begins investigating him at her Chicago Sun internship. I can tell that Lauren Beukes is a talented author, I can't write this entire book off. This seems to be pretty well researched from the Chicago perspective, Mayor Donovan (Read Klayton) was a nice touch to the Randolph street Hooverville. There's actually a surprising amount of visual detail in here, particularly where it concerns the descriptions of the shining girls as Harper sees them. But that's about all the praise I can muster; there is a breakdown in the story the closer we approach the core of the narrative. I wish that I knew how every detail connected up, the fact that I can't even try has me questioning myself. Maybe it's in here, an explanation? A satisfying conclusion? Something that can justify an ending that reeks of toast. I couldn't tell you what happens at the end of this story. I mean, I can, Kirby gets tipped off that some menacing guy is asking after her. Showcasing some uncharacteristic wile, she stalks Harper back to the time travel house and sneaks in with enabler/mentor/admirer Dan after the police search and find nothing but crack house. Dan fights Harper in 1929 while Kirby burns all the shining memorabilia and splatters Harpers brains on the carpet when he returns to the house to stop her.. But the ending explains nothing. Why do the girls shine? Why is house magic? Who is Harper? Nothing. This book ends like oh-s0-many thrillers, with the protagonist defeating the villain, just without any of the catharsis or satisfaction of unraveling the mystery. Most time travel books really work their asses off to explain the function of time travel in their universe, or at least they try to get the reader to understand the role that time travel will play in the larger narrative beyond simply existing. We have time travel here, and for the first third it's just a big whatever! So much of the early parts of this book are just like “here's a thing” or “here's a brutal murder” and then the page turns, and it means nothing because now we're in 1989 and following a completely different character and narrative thread. I'm all for a puzzling read, but it has to unravel eventually!I read this right after [b:Recursion 42046112 Recursion Blake Crouch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543687940l/42046112.SY75.jpg 64277987] so it's very apparent to me that there is some genre confusion going on here. The balance in the SF-Thriller formula is not being respected, this is a thriller that just glosses over its SF elements and not a complete melding of concepts. I'm not saying that the formula is fixed and that you can't alter the ratio, movies the like the Lake house prove that you can designate your non-SF elements as the focus and still tell a compelling story. The problem in The Shining Girls is that there is just too much of the story wrapped up in the non-mystery/thriller aspects. To end the book without resolving those threads is to present us with a book that is undercooked.I know that I said I can't write the whole book off, but I am close. Those Chicago history moments? They read like they came out of a history book, honestly, for as accurate as the portrayal of Chicago was, it rang inauthentic and scripted (As the acknowledgements illuminate: the setting comes from some haunted city tours). I haven't even touched on the characters: Dan, her journalist mentor with a big time crush that just robs him of agency (Please Dan, can I investigate these 80-year-old murders on company time? I know we're supposed to cover the cubs, but they'll be irrelevant until 2016 fluttering lashes). Kirby herself is mostly an impression in my mind, a collection of scars and crazy ideas that the story describes as charming; she's an extremely jaded individual. The problem is that all of her life experience is being backfilled as a way to excuse or explain her poor social skills. I am not a fan, the formula seems to be: Kirby talks to someone, Kirby feels awkward, or the conversation sucks, Kirby does or says something out of pocket or awkward, and then we get a page or two about how much it sucked to have her throat slit. I'm sure that experience scars you (in more ways than one) but we're with her after a multi-year time skip and there's not enough context for the reader to excuse these quirks of her character. That applies to everyone in this book; It felt like a lot of the initial development/establishing of the cast was covered with a coat of gloss. Avery, our limping time travelling psycho, is just that, a collection of keywords and phrases. He does stuff all book long without any rhyme or reason, he has major character moments only for them to read like filler because of how little we know about his inner machinations. I did not like this book, and I feel a little short-changed. The entire book is saying, “Read me! I'm smart and complex and mysterious! It'll all pay off, just keep going!” only to not pay off and not be anything but complicated for the sake of complication. This was extremely well received in 2013, and those media rights went straight to DiCaprio. Did other people get this? Am I wrong here? They made a show out of this! Where is the appeal!

This book if definitely not a favorite for me. The amount of exposition was exhausting. It would also veer toward gruesome at unexpected times. If the intent was shock value, I found the gratuitous violence more irritating than anything, it ripped me out of the story.
I almost lemmed it, but keep reading in case the end payoff made it worth while. it did not. I didn't find any satisfaction there either.
Wish I could rate this 1 1/2 stars.

Great concept, executed perfectly.

There's a lot of violence in here, but the story doesn't feel like violence porn at all. The victims are all female but they're also all very compelling as characters, which makes their fates feel all the more tragic, and the killer's demise all the more satisfying.

Bonus points for saucy Polish expletives.

Beukes is a great writer and thorough researcher who created a cast of interesting, powerful, complicated women throughout time. It just sucks that most of them are murder victims. I think I understand conceptually her desire to give voice and depth to the as she calls them “pretty corpses” of crime thrillers, and she does that, but the genre itself is still limiting. The murderer is misogyny person, literally killing women who would otherwise change the world. It's a solid metaphor, but a frustrating read.

Also, while the time travel element is cool, the paradoxes always hurt my brain a bit. The writing was good enough that my suspension of disbelief was only strained rather than snapping.

Surprisingly uninvolving, with some pretty gruesome violence. I think the disjointed timeline acted to distance the reader (well, me) from the characters. While the story is competently told, I don't really understand why this is apparently considered a “buzzy” book. 3.5 stars, rounded down since it felt less than the sum of its parts.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

You might go into this book thinking that it is a science fiction time-travel story. The heart of the story is a serial killer who manages to kill different women across six decades. The killer — Harper Curtis — does not do this the normal way of living through time. Instead, visits the victims — all women who “shine” to him — when they are little and then again when they are in their twenties. While the girls grow up. Harper doesn't age.

How does he do it?

It is not much of a spoiler to share that he has a magical house that lets him open the door to any day that he desires during the period 1929 to 1993.

Wait....what?

What kind of technology does that? It is not technology. The story is not interested in the mechanics of time travel. It and the reader simply assume that this is the way things are. Generally, the reader has enough goodwill to suspend disbelief and make the assumption for the sake of the story. This is part of the bargain between reader and writer — the writer will tell an interesting story if the reader concedes certain points about the way the world works. In fantasy, the concession is that magic works or elves live among us. We know this can't be true, but if we don't allow those assumptions, we don't have fantasy stories.

Science fiction works the same way. A science fiction writer will hand wave at some scientific principle or device, but effectively it is a gesture to a kind of magic. Again, the author can invoke “wormholes” as the basis for time travel, and the reader just has to agree that time travel is scientifically possible and that this device can do it.

Then, there is horror. Horror seems to exist as a separate genre, perhaps shading into fantasy on the “grimdark fantasy” frontier. Horror generally eschews systems of magic, leaving that to fantasy. Humans seem to lack agenda; they are the victims and if they prevail it is because the villain is hit by a car or a nuclear bomb goes off, to allude to the way Stephen King concluded “Fire Starter” and “The Stand.” Fantasy is definitely about human agency struggling and ultimately making a difference. Horror often is about human agency being meaningless. Ancient dark gods exist outside of our time and space who will wipe us out as easily as we swat a fly when the stars are right over R'ylleh.

I've always thought that horror is a genre for the lazy. Horror is about evil. Even if God is not a necessary hypothesis, horror must assume that evil exists and that it can work weird miracles, whatever weird miracles are needed by the author. No explanation is necessary or even attempted. If the author needs a weird, time-traveling house to allow a sociopath to kill women over the twentieth century, then — hey, presto! — the house appears because.....the devil? Ancient alien gods? Fate? Who knows? Evil has its reasons for existence.

“The Shining Girls” is horror. Harper is one of the many destitute men out on the streets during the Great Depression. We know from the start that he is not a good man. When he stumbles into the house after committing a murder, he finds the body of the previous occupant, who has been killed. Harper discovers that the previous occupant used the house's time-travel potential for sensible purposes, namely, making sports bets on contests he knows the outcomes for. In contrast, Harper immediately intuits that there is a list of girls in one room that he must kill. Why? Because Harper is evil and evil explains itself. Horror is simple if lazy.

Kirby Mazrachi is one of the girls numbered among Harper's “shining girls.” Harper botches the job on her and she survives in a way that leaves him thinking he was successful. Kirby's mission is to find her attacker. She interns with Dan Velazquez, the crime reporter who covered her story. She uses Dan's connections at his newspaper to find clues that suggest that there have been murders over the decades where odd objects have been left with the body. One or two of these objects are paradoxically anachronistic. Dan becomes infatuated with Kirby.

In science fiction, Kirby and Dan would have reasoned their way to an answer from the paradoxical clues. In fantasy, Kirby and Dan would have employed courage and inspiration to overcome the adversary. This is horror and so all of the breadcrumb clues don't matter. In the end, Harper learns that Kirby lived and comes to get her before she and Dan have verified that the clues are true. Human agency is ultimately irrelevant.

This may be particularly true in time-travel fiction. This book occasionally gestures at the idea that everything is predetermined. When Harper disposes of the body of the previous owner, he saw the body of another person in a dumpster in 1993. When Harper meets that man later, Harper closes the loop by killing the man in 1931 and dumping him into the dumpster in 1993 before he puts the other body in. The shining girls are on the list because Harper killed them and he killed them because they were on the list. Human agency is so lacking that effect precedes cause.

The story proceeds as a thriller. Dan's unrequited romantic feelings for Kirby remain unrequited. Like the paradoxical clues, the romantic tension was filler.

This book has been turned into a series for Apple TV. I'm sure that it will make a fine bit of entertainment. The story itself is entertaining. The problem is that for me the author broke the deal which was to keep me so entertained that I would not start picking nits in the time-travel house McGuffin. At the end, I wasn't that interested in the characters who were thin personalities revolving around their fixations. Dan came across as potentially the most interesting, but his infatuation with Kirby required its own suspension of disbelief given their two-decade age difference.

The time-travel element was also thin. The author made an effort to research details about the Chicago setting and history. The first “shining girl” murder — the murder of an erotic dancer who painted herself with radium so that she would glow during performances — is a historic fact. There was also a nice scene where Harper takes a woman from 1931 to the Chicago World's Fair of 1937. These kinds of scenes will be visually arresting in the TV series, assuming that viewers know the timing of these events.

These are details. The fact that I'm spending time on these details indicates that the book did not make me want to keep my disbelief suspended. But I was judging it as a science fiction book where the logic is tighter, and humans have agency. As a horror book, this book has entertainment value.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes.

I have finished my first book of 2024! This was the January pick for the Sword and Laser podcast. The Shining Girls is the story of a time-traveling serial killer and the victim he failed to kill. They chase each other through time as she tries to solve the mystery and he tries to finish what he started.

This is a book that doesn't sit neatly in any genre. I think I'd put it first in the thriller/suspense category, with some mystery and sci-fi/fantasy elements. Maybe a little dash of horror?? I thought the characters were interesting and well-written, and the concept of the book was really neat. For my own personal tastes, it was a bit gory/violent. However, my biggest complaint was that I felt the book left a lot of big questions unanswered - time travel always offers up a lot of interesting plot possibilities and I feel like the book could have done more there?

Apparently this was also made into a show for Apple TV, if that's more your speed.

It's the 1990's and Kirby Mizrachi, a survivor of a brutal attack, is trying to close in on her unknown assailant with the help of an ex-homicide reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, Dan Velasquez. What they don't realize is their suspect is time-travelling serial killer Harper Curtis who is somewhere in Chicago, sometime between his world of 1930 and now.

It's an impossible mystery and I was hooked with the notion of how author Lauren Beukes was going to resolve this for the reader. What hope does Kirby have while Harper traipses through the timeline viciously murdering a remarkably diverse list of “shining girls” including a black welder at the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company in 1943, a Korean social worker in 1993 and transexual Lucas Ziegenfeus (Alice) working a travelling carnival. Harper leaves anachronistic tokens by his victims, but considering the thousands of unsolved cases spanning a near century they hardly seems like viable signposts. We're talking some pretty impossible odds here against a foe with your entire timeline at his disposal.

This is gruesome and horrifying, veering well into horror but I was riveted. I hesitate to call spending time with a perversely motivated, brutally vicious serial killer a beach read but it was the thoroughly engaging thriller that I needed as I lounged by the pool not thinking of work.