THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
When I started this blogging business, I made a promise to myself – no spoilers. I may have accidentally broken that promise at times or spoiled things that I didn’t consider to be major, but now I’m going to do it on purpose.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
At times, Phillips apparently Pulitzer Prize-winning approach seems to mirror that of Ransom Riggs in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Research. This is not a completely bad thing, but like Riggs, Phillips at times seems to be writing in the service of the research and photographs rather than letting the research and photographs serve her writing.
And the first half of the book skips around in time and narration because why? Then it settles at the Asylum. Fine – good, even. At that point, I just wanted her to tell the &^%$ story. One character has amnesia. Then a second has amnesia – or is just pretending, maybe? Then a third character, who has abandoned two others at the asylum returns, perhaps, Phillips suggests, seeing the asylum as preferential to prison? But if that was truly the reason, then why the outlandish behavior when he admitted himself? Then he kind of disappears into the background as an occasional threat / reminder of the past. Then the lesser of the two amnesiacs – the one who might have been pretending or may have recovered – recognizes (how? Did anyone catch this? At this point, I was just reading to finish.) – the legitimate amnesiac as her husband. They go to explain things to the head doctor who has been courting/curing the lesser amnesiac, only to have the man who turned himself in reappear (we later learn that he has escaped) to shoot the doctor. Why? He clearly did not love the lesser amnesiac. His treatment of her is brutal. And we have the man (the true amnesiac) literally jumping in front of the gun to save the day. At the center of this mess is ConaLee, a 12-year-old girl. I’m pretty sure I know who her father is, but then there’s some suggestion about the question of her motherhood because of the mysterious root woman who lives up the hill who seems to have had sex with the true amnesiac, but then there is a mention of a three-year interval before ConaLee was born, so maybe I am making this up, but then why mention the relationship? To show why Dearbhla cares for him so much and goes to find him? I don’t know. And then look, it all ends happily ever after.
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