So I first tried this book a few months ago, read a few pages, and then put it back down. None really impressed me, and I don’t think I’ll be seeking out any of her work.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. At this point, I’ve tried two of Lauren Beukes books and a collection of her short stories. The time traveling feels like a plot gimmick, the romance is completely unnecessary, and the story is not nearly as subversive as it thinks it is. It’s clear that a lot of research went into this area.However, The Shining Girls is not a book I will ever reread. Beukes also has a gift for describing the historical settings and how Chicago changes through the decades. I ended up reading the entirety of The Shining Girls in one day. This pattern is entirely predictable and plays into problematic trends about who gets to be a heroine.On the bright side, the pacing is appropriately fast for a thriller. The woman who lives is straight, white and cis. All of Harper’s victims are women existing within our sexist society, but there are intersections within the category “women.” The women who die are black, Asian, gay, and trans. She could have disappeared from the majority of the story, and the result would have been the same.I also question the decision to make Kirby the survivor. I’m not sure what effect if any her actions during the first 75% of the book have. While the plot of the story is nominally Kirby bringing Harper to justice, she lacks agency, driven by the plot instead of driving it.
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Additionally, Dan, Kirby’s mentor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has reoccurring chapters.But even as The Shining Girls brings in chapters from the victims perspectives, it still ends up feeling like that same story we are all familiar with, the focus being on a male serial killer brutally murdering women. Other sections contain points of view from Harper’s other victims, giving the reader a glimpse into the lives of the women Harper kills. Unfortunately, I found it not nearly as powerful or subversive as I think Beukes intended.The Shining Girls is told from many different POVs, with the two most prominent being the killer, Harper, and the survivor, Kirby. In it, Beukes says she wrote The Shining Girls to be as much about the victims as the killer. The essay burns with anger at the way media treats female murder victims as pretty dead things, not people whose lives have been cut short. After reading Beukes nonfiction essay “All the Pretty Corpses,” I decided I had to read The Shining Girls. Then one of his victims survives.The Shining Girls was oddly forgettable. The evidence is … impossible.In Chicago, a serial killer hunts through time, targeting girls from “shining girls” from different eras. Still struggling to find her attacker, her only ally is Dan, an ex-homicide reporter who covered her case and now might be falling in love with her.Īs Kirby investigates, she finds the other girls – the ones who didn’t make it. Tell that to Kirby Mazrachi, whose life was shattered after a brutal attempt to murder her. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen 'shining girls' through the decades – and cut the spark out of them. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature – it opens onto other times. You shouldn’t make me do this.”Ĭhicago 1931. THE SHINING GIRLS is now streaming on Apple TV+, starring Elisabeth Moss and Jamie Bell But THE SHINING GIRLS have arrived’ (The Times). The jaw-dropping, page-turning, critically-acclaimed book of the year: a serial-killer thriller unlike any other from the award-winning Lauren Beukes.
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