Emma Copley Eisenberg

This was a tough book to rate. To me, the memoir/true crime/history of Appalachia/psychology themes of the book were a bit too much and made the book disjointed. I liked the author's writing and think she has real talent, but the flow was off to me. I was listening to it so that may be part of the issue as I do better with print books (author has a nice reading voice too). I enjoyed the history and social critique of WVA because that is where my dad grew up and I found it enlightening.
I would like to read more of this author.… (mer)

surprisingly, the least interesting parts in this book were actually about the killings this book is supposed to be about. the information about west virginia and its changing politics was the most interesting, and i appreciated her personal introspection even as it was at most peripherally related to the main story. i found myself much less interested in the story she was ostensibly writing about, and i don't know if that was her writing or the fact that it's not a solved crime (there are theories, though), or my inconsistent attention as i was listening.

it was kind of shocking to me to learn that west virginia split from virginia in part to join the union and fight the confederacy (although it was more a two thirds majority, not super overwhelming, but still), that they were against slavery and wanted to fight it. that they voted democratic consistently (like in all but 3 elections) until basically 2000. i thought the deep red had been entrenched for many years. like many people, i guess i have some misconceptions about west virginia.

she's a good writer, and makes some interesting points and connections, but i didn't find that i was very engaged with the book. overall this was just ok for me, but i'd read her again.

"In America, protecting or avenging white women from a violation of their safety or sexual autonomy has been used time and time again to justify the unlawful incarceration of men, particularly poor men and men of color."

"You start to think maybe you can abdicate your privilege like a crown, if only you try hard enough, and that maybe that will settle the score. I felt broken and running from the system in my mind, in which the only choices were to dominate or be dominated, stay completely still or get annihilated by my feelings and the terror of history. It was a system of impossible twos and endless double-binds, and I was afraid to move within it, or choose anything. I felt that no one I knew had a clue about America, it's true texture and shape and flavor and that the ways I had been taught to live in it were no longer working."… (mer)

(24) I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, a well-written true crime exploration of the killings of two young women who were hitchhiking to a hippie festival in rural West Virginia in 1980. Their bodies were dumped in an out of the way clearing that seemed accessible or knowable only by locals. Was this a culture clash - the rural Appalachian 'Deliverance' sort of male enraged at counter-culture and women who dare be independent? Unfortunately, the case is never definitely solved and the author's exploration seems to not add that much. So in order to make it worthy of a book there is some well-written West Virginia sociological history (best part of the book) and a deeply personal narration about the author's young adulthood in which she lived some in Pocahontas County where the murders took place as part of AmeriCorps (worst part of the book.)

The writing was uneven. At times, when the author was writing about her own existential angst it was unfocused and pretentious. All the earmarks of the new millennium liberal arts education with terms like cultural relativism, historical trauma, toxic masculinity, and this notion of being aware of your own privilege. It truly came off as that horrible but apt term - 'virtue-signaling.'

I think this author has potential and the negative here is a common forgivable rookie mistake - she tried to do too much in one book. I think she should have stuck to the story of the Rainbow murders and how it may reflect a deeper truth (or not) about West Virginia. I think her own personal knowledge of the area could have informed that and added to the book as opposed to the memoir aspect which detracted. My critique sounds too harsh for my actual star rating of this book as is often the case when one has mixed feelings. Give it a try if you like a more literary look at the true crime genre.… (mer)