My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier

[lightreads]

My Sister Rosa

3/5. Seventeen-year-old boy moves to NYC with his entrepreneur parents and his little sister, the budding psychopath. He wants to protect her, or protect everyone else from her – one of those.

I said "yikes, this is a car crash" in the first ten percent of this book, and I don't think it's a spoiler to confirm that yeah, it is. This book shares some DNA with her Liar -- interested in competing narratives and in how we conceive of the origins of evilness in people. Not so much where the evil comes from, but in why we ask that question and what our answers – genes, environment, bad luck – say about us.

So this is interesting, but at a certain point with an author you have to acknowledge that they like writing car crashes, and that you only like reading car crashes under very limited, specific circumstances.

Content notes: Child harm.

Comments

[readerjane]

I had a similar reaction to the Thomas Lynley novels by Elizabeth George. They were powerfully written, and I liked the main characters a lot - especially Barbara Havers, Lynley's angry, working-class sergeant. I liked them, but I couldn't keep watching those characters self-destruct.

Out of curiosity, which are your limited circumstances for reading car crashes? Example?

[lightreads]

Hm, it's a very particular mood that I can't quite describe. Oddly, when I'm stressed, I sometimes gravitate towards books that I know will be troubling to read. Probably some sort of cathartic instinct. For a while I put M.R. Carey in this category (see Fellside) but he tends towards a twist of surprising hope at the end, even if half the cast is horribly dead. And I like that in his work, but it's a different thing.