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The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A time traveling serial killer hunts women up and down the twentieth century. Until one girl survives, and starts hunting him back.

Oh fuuuuuuck that was good. And awful and calculatedly vicious. And marvelously twisty like only good time travel can be – it got me at least twice with a sudden lurch of dislocation, like time was spinning around my head.

But mostly? That was smart as hell. This book is about gendered violence, about the unthinking rage that comes down on women who are forced, by queerness or desire or circumstance, to renegotiate their assigned place in the world. And it's a knowing, pained love letter to a century, and to Chicago, and girls who shine.

Not everyone will dig this (and warning for animal harm, btw) but I really, really did. I will be thinking about this for a while. And also, I badly want to talk to someone who has read it about the structure and why the time travel loops are all so carefully and precisely closed -- volunteers, please.




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