January’s book pick for the Sword & Laser Book Club, Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, is almost something that would have worked better as an October book pick. It’s a story that features a serial killer as an antagonist who can move independently of the rest of us in the time stream – only this one can go back and forth, as opposed to only moving forward, never aging, like the killer in NOS4A2. It’s an interesting story though, though I don’t quite know if it’s my cup of tea (though not for reasons I think the author intended).
The novel’s main protagonist is Kirby Mizrachi. She’s a girl who, in 1989 Chicago, is attacked by a killer, Harper Curtis, and is nearly killed but is left for dead. What Kirby doesn’t know is that Harper is a time traveler from the 1930s, who steps in a magic house that wants him to murder the titular Shining girls – girls with potential – throughout the timestream. Kirby is not the first of these murders, we see others of them throughout the novel, all from the perspectives of the victims. However, in 1993, having survived, she’s become a reporter and tries to investigate her own attempted murder, so she can try to stop the chain of killings.
The part of the story that works the best is how Beukes makes sure to center the titular girls in the story. We get each of their individual stories, and get to see them fleshed out as characters, before moving to when Harper murders (or, in Kirby’s case, attempts to murder) them. There’s no “30 minutes with Jerks” or anything like that, none of these women feel like cardboard cutouts. They’re people with lives and life goals, that are eventually brought to a tragic end by Harper.
Unfortunately, Harper is perhaps the biggest problem with the story – we get just a little bit too much of him, and what we get is unnecessarily extra. One of the criticisms that remember seeing made a fair amount of the Game of Thrones novels, and similar works of Dark Fantasy, is overuse of rape and the threat of sexual violence. The point being made is that yes, rape and sexual violence are unfortunately things that happen in the Really Real World. The world that exists in your novel, however, is a crafted world, even if it’s one that’s meant to reflect the real world. So, the use of sexual violence, unless carefully handled, risks engaging in Unnecessary Roughness on the reader.
Now, Harper does not rape any of the Shining Girls. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t get sexual pleasure out of killing them. In the chapters that focus on his perspective, Beukes explicitly describes the sexual arousal he gets at the prospect of murder, and after the killings he later goes and, um, self-gratifies at the scene of the murder. I’m glad there aren’t actual rapes, and the mention of how Harper gets off after each killing is thankfully brief, and yes there are people like this in real life. I do think it’s possible to go too far, and for readers who have had to contend with sexual violence in their past, this could make for a “Nope” point in the story.
I think the story was very intense and interesting. I’m glad I read it. I’m probably not going to read it again, but the story of the novel, and how well it focuses on and centers the women of the story makes it something praiseworthy. If this sort of horror/mystery sounds like your cup of tea, I’d recommend picking it up.
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