JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

See How Small by Scott Blackwood

See How Small
Scott Blackwood
January 2015

It begins one summer evening in a small Texas town. Two men walk into an ice cream shop shortly before it closes. They bind the three teenager girls working behind the counter. They set fire to the shop. They disappear.

Loosely based on the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas, See How Small explores a community’s reactions to the brutal and seemingly random murder of these three girls. It is told through the perspectives of the community’s survivors, witnesses, suspects, and yes, the deceased girls. Above everything else is the girls’ shared narration as they watch over the community during the five years following their deaths, as they attempt to comfort their town.

The second I finished this book I went online to read other reviews of it. I thought, surely I’ve missed something here? But no, it appears everyone else was just as confused as I was after finishing it.

The first few pages really grab the reader, and I can imagine it grabbed the publisher as well. But then the pace starts to really slow. I thought the dead girls would be more involved in the story, because the blurb mentions that they live on in spirit form and watch over the people who have been left behind. However, they really only appear in a few chapters.

There are too many characters in this book. There were even some sections that I think I could’ve skipped and I still would’ve understood the book, and a reader should never be able to say that about a novel. The book jumped around way too much, and some chapters were just too short. As a result, I couldn’t sympathise for any of the characters because I didn’t really care about them.

I must say that the writing is beautiful and evocative, and Scott Blackwood is a very lyrical writer. His vocabulary and the smooth flow of his sentences painted an enriching and engaging story for the reader. It’s just a shame that the story itself wasn’t fleshed out as well as it could’ve been. The story was too non-linear, and flicked back and forth in time. Some chapters were about the time right after the murders, and sometimes the chapters went forward five years. And even though this is a spoiler, I’m going to say it anyway. There’s no resolution to this novel. None. And who wants that in a crime novel?

My Score: 5/10
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An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun–but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

I really struggled with this one. It was kind of a snoozefest. A well-written snoozefest. But let me start with some positives. All of the characters seem to suffer some kind of emotional loss, which is hard for an author to write. John Green manages to write this well and with a lot of literary subtly. The chapters are short, the novel is short, and there is a fair bit of humour in the story to break up the mundane lives of the characters. Also, there’s a certain level of maths mentioned in this book, and it all seemed legit. And this is surprising, since it was all equations and formulas. It sounded like it worked perfectly, so kudos to John Green for that.

But there were many, many negatives. Firstly, the three books I’ve read so far of John Green’s (The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska) ALL seem to have characters that are emotionally lost in life. It’s getting kind of boring, and this story really dragged. Colin and Hussan were supposed to go on a road trip, but the entire story is about their first stop. That’s not really a road trip. Also, the characters aren’t really relatable, and I found them quite boring. Lindsey is unrealistic, and so is the social dynamic between Colin and Hussan. The pace of this novel is too slow and the reader will constantly wonder where the novel is going.

I only recommend this novel to avid John Green fans.

My Score: 5/10
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