The Girl Below: A Novel (utgåvan 2012)

The Girl Below is an intriguing book that picks you up and takes you away from the moment you look at the cover. It’s all absorbing; from the moment I pondered what the girl on the cover could be locked in (or out of) to the point where I’ve finished the book and writing the review. Bianca Zander should be commended on an impressive book that really pulls you in, twisting and turning genres and settings to a gripping conclusion.

The novel’s protagonist is Suki, who returns to London after leaving shortly after her mother’s death. She’s lived in New Zealand (such a rare setting – more please!) for the last ten years, somewhat aimlessly. She thinks that she can return to London and pick up a purposeful life again. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Her friends have moved on – they’re now serious, with jobs and boyfriends – and Suki falls into drifting again from share flats to people’s couches. She returns to her old flat and visits her old neighbour, Peggy. This causes two things to happen – for Peggy to rekindle her relationship with Peggy’s daughter, Pippa, and her family and to reignite memories of a wild party from her youth. Suki is still terrified of the bomb shelter in the backyard (where she was trapped during this party) and moving in with Peggy fuels her fears. Why is this scene so important to Suki?

Zander makes this novel change from finding oneself to having us question Suki’s mind and motives. Is she all she seems? As Suki’s memories become stronger and scarier, Gothic elements start to shine through until I wasn’t really sure what was real and what was fantasy. The ending pulls it together and whether you agree with the rationale or not, you have to admit that it is powerfully done. Zander creates a sense of atmosphere that is broody, close and almost another character.

Speaking of characters, I found Pippa’s son, Caleb a great character. As a teenager, he’s not scared to get to the point rather bluntly nor push his limits. He’s the antithesis to Suki, who skirts around things and is a powerful force in helping her to confront her memories. Peggy is also wonderfully eccentric with her flat full of costumes and strangely heavy fur coat. Pippa, who we first meet as a devil may care teenager, is wonderfully juxtaposed as the modern day worrying mum – what happened to the carefree girl? Her character shows us the passage of time and how it changes us, whether we like it or not.

A wonderfully atmospheric book debut (so much so that I didn’t want to read the last section at night!)

Thank you to Bloomsbury Sydney for the ARC.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

An odd book... I couldn't put it down, but I never really enjoyed it, and the main character Suki became more and more annoying to me as the story progressed. I was impressed with Zander's narrative style, and the way that she combined the routine, day to day stuff with just enough creepy surrealism. But things meandered on for so long, and I didn't find the ending satisfying... seems that after all of Suki's various issues, it wrapped up a little too neatly. ( )

After her mother's death and her return to her hometown after years away, Suki Piper is plagued by her past. Her strange, unexplainable recollections of a party thrown by her parents and a flooding WWII bunker in her yard haunt her, both defining and eluding her childhood memories. Since she is stalled in her present day life, listless and direction-less, she instead delves into her past to find out what actually happened that has haunted her for so long.

The plot pulls out strands of gothic, horror, and magical realism motifs in order to explore the simultaenous haunting and unreliability of memory, particularly childhood memory. But the book was held back by Suki's own self-absorbed lack of direction; as a protagonist, she was both emotionally distant and unsympathetic, making it difficult to read along with her voice. The book should be lauded for what it attempts to do -- an exploration of life and memory messier and less reliable than is usually found in novels -- but it was difficult for me to become emotionally invested in this one. ( )

I have mixed feelings about “The Girl Below”. Since I can’t decide if it is a book that got close to, but didn’t quite reach a deliciously creepy and VERY twisted place or if it is a book about a train wreck of a main character…I am unable to decide how much I liked it. As a deliciously creepy book that didn’t quite finish the task, I liked it but was a bit disappointed that the bogeyman didn’t quite jump out of the closet. As a book about a train wreck of a main character…it was frustrating to have such an unreliable narrator – especially when the reader is unable to ever really discern the reality of her world.

“Up on the roof, the night was clear, with a weak moon hanging on the horizon. I wondered how another entire day had slipped away without my participating in it.”

Main character Suki Piper is so helpless to change her life, or to even recognize at times that she has a life to live, that the reader just wants to shake her. Not only is she apathetic, socially inept and relatively amoral…she is disinterested in these facts – in either recognizing them or changing them. After a while, I wondered why is she cared so little about what was occurring around her (she is never really an active participant) why I should care.

But THEN…something wonderfully disturbing would happen and I was back in. I won’t be a spoiler…but will say that when I read the section that takes place in a wardrobe late at night…I wished I wasn’t the only one awake in our house.

And sometimes the extent to which Suki is an unreliable narrator is intriguing. I found myself wondering about the enormity of the information I was not getting from her.

“Had I really talked to Edward? It seemed unlikely that he would have found me here. But if not him, then to whom had I spoken? I scanned the studio’s gray walls for clues, but found none – nothing in here reminded me of anything. Even the clothes in my suitcase did not look like mine. My driver’s license showed a picture of a familiar young woman, but the girl in the liquor store had been right not to recognize her. Neither did I.”

As a rule, I love stuff like that. I love wondering what is really behind the curtain. And I never have to be able to see it in its entirety. But I do expect some kind of payoff. At some point, the curtain needs a good yank – I want some wide eyed glimpse of claws, bloodshot eyes, a sinister laugh.

What makes for a disappointing ending is the possibility that there was never a curtain there at all…and even worse, that the story I finish seems completely different than the one I started. ( )

Confusing and sort of uneven, the premise of this book of a woman dealing with her past and correcting mistakes made there doesn't quite seem to be what's inside the box. Suki isn't particularly interesting as a protagonist given her self-absorption, her uneven narration, and her obsession with how the world has supposedly mistreated her. As a tale of maturing, it doesn't exactly work since at the end of the day I don't see Suki having grown up all that much over the course of the narrative, and a protagonist pretty much ending a story in the same place they began is never a good sign. Wouldn't recommend this one. ( )