The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

Book Review

"Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid."

The Burning Girl will be released on 7th September. It is written by Claire Messud and published by Fleet.

This is a strange one. I was expecting The Burning Girl to be a thriller, but it's more of an exploration of a friendship with a slow (forgive me for the pun) burn. It has depth and Messud's writing is beautiful yet realistic.


BLURB
Julia Robinson and Cassie Burnes have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge: while Julia comes from a stable, happy, middle-class family, Cassie never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and has an increasingly tempestuous relationship with her single mother, Bev. When Bev becomes involved with the mysterious Anders Shute, Cassie feels cruelly abandoned. Disturbed, angry and desperate for answers, she sets out on a journey that will put her own life in danger, and shatter her oldest friendship. 

Compact, compelling, and ferociously sad, The Burning Girl is at once a story about childhood, friendship and community, and a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about childhood and friendship. Claire Messud brilliantly mixes folklore and Bildungsroman, exploring the ways in which our made-up stories, and their consequences, become real.

The Burning Girl reminded me a little of My Brilliant Friend, in that it explores the friendship between two girls, one who is a little more awkward and in awe of the other. The unravelling story feels very realistic, I recognised a lot of feelings I had when I was younger with intense female friendships; love but also envy and competition. Messud is very good at capturing the feeling and both Julia and Cassie felt like believable characters.

"Being in Bonnybrook was like being inside both Cassie's head and my own, as if we had one mind and could roam its limits together, inventing stories and making ourselves as we wanted them to be."

At times there was a little too much teen angst for me. Don't get me wrong, The Burning Girl doesn't read like a YA novel, but it obviously does dwell on a lot of high school elements with the ages of the girls. However, Messud manages to counter this with the depth of her writing and the introspection that Julia narrates with.

She also covers darker subjects, especially about what it means to be a girl and young woman. It's about the dangers we face, both physically and psychologically.

Messud also touches on other subjects, such as class, friendship, love and mental illness.

I really liked the writing style, Messud has some lovely descriptions which manage to be timeless yet also modern.

"From there, the last stretch of the summer unspooled like thread off a bobbin."

The pace of the The Burning Girl is slow, a little too slow sometimes, I did find myself wondering when anything significant was going to happen. But it was quite a nice break from the shock a minute thrillers that I've been reading recently.

My Rating: 4/5

I received a copy of The Burning Girl via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

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