Book times!
Jun. 7th, 2011 06:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyI finally finished Don't Breathe A Word last night. To repay me for this, my brain kindly spent the next five hours spinning out one nightmare after the other, all of which had to do with the book. Excellent. The cover kind of creeps you out if you look at it too long, which I imagine is the whole point.
What they tell you:
On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.
Fifteen years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam, a practical, sensible man who doesn’t fear the dark and doesn’t have bad dreams—who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own. But suddenly the couple is faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurrences that challenge Sam’s hardheaded, realistic view of the world. As they question their reality, a terrible promise Sam made years ago is revealed—a promise that could destroy them all.
The reality:
Don't Breathe A Word offers up two explanations for what happened to Lisa all those years ago.
One: Fairies are real and are drawn to Lisa's family tree. For generations they have interfered and done horrible things because they could and they wanted to do so. Their interest ensnared Lisa and threatens to destroy the hard won happiness Sam and Phoebe have found with each other.
Two: Lisa's disappearance had nothing to do with fairies and was, instead, a result of a very twisted family tree and a secret that was already hard at work destroying cousin Evie fifteen years ago. Humanity is sicker and far more sinister than truly given credit for and needed no help in abducting a young girl and then slowly destroying her in the ensuing years.
The book walks a fine line between the two explanations for most of the story. The first third of the book leans heavily towards Fairies are real, while the second third details the ways in which it would be so much worse for this to simply be humanity acting on all the urges that should never be encouraged. The final third is tricky and left open to interpretation. It's also the section that's going to do your head in.
Right up until the very end I was pretty content to go with whichever explanation was being offered at the time. Fairies! Sure, why the hell not. Twisted family secret that involves as much inbreeding as your average Rice or Andrews novel, sure! Fairies! Inbreeding! Both! Good times! The biggest argument against the fairies being real is that when Lisa is kidnapped she's held hostage by her own aunt, cousin, and occasionally her mother... and there's another girl already there and pregnant by the time Lisa is finally taken.* While this happens to give way to my favorite quote of the book, it doesn't exactly scream fairies. Nor does the lone chapter given by Gene's point of view, which hammers home the idea that this guy never stood a chance, raised by a mother who didn't want him, kept hidden away with only his half-sister to keep him company and even that was sporadic at best. Of course he was nutty.
Flip side: Fairies, man. Fairies. Evie 1 knew Phoebe was preggers before she did. The end of the book and the kidnapping. Was this something that Phoebe's brain cooked up due to the stress of giving birth and hearing from Evie again after all that time, or... was there truly fairy magic involved?
* - So I am left wondering this, and it is never addressed as far as I can recall: If Hazel and Evie were spending the summer with Lisa's family, who exactly was going to take care of Gene if Evie hadn't smuggled him along for the ill-fated trip? Was this Hazel's way of attempting to kill him or... what? Also, if Lisa arrived and there was already another girl there, who was taking care of *her* during the summer?
Ultimately it's a creepier read than you might expect, especially given the blurb, although the cover does warn you.
What they tell you:
On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.
Fifteen years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam, a practical, sensible man who doesn’t fear the dark and doesn’t have bad dreams—who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own. But suddenly the couple is faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurrences that challenge Sam’s hardheaded, realistic view of the world. As they question their reality, a terrible promise Sam made years ago is revealed—a promise that could destroy them all.
The reality:
Don't Breathe A Word offers up two explanations for what happened to Lisa all those years ago.
One: Fairies are real and are drawn to Lisa's family tree. For generations they have interfered and done horrible things because they could and they wanted to do so. Their interest ensnared Lisa and threatens to destroy the hard won happiness Sam and Phoebe have found with each other.
Two: Lisa's disappearance had nothing to do with fairies and was, instead, a result of a very twisted family tree and a secret that was already hard at work destroying cousin Evie fifteen years ago. Humanity is sicker and far more sinister than truly given credit for and needed no help in abducting a young girl and then slowly destroying her in the ensuing years.
The book walks a fine line between the two explanations for most of the story. The first third of the book leans heavily towards Fairies are real, while the second third details the ways in which it would be so much worse for this to simply be humanity acting on all the urges that should never be encouraged. The final third is tricky and left open to interpretation. It's also the section that's going to do your head in.
Right up until the very end I was pretty content to go with whichever explanation was being offered at the time. Fairies! Sure, why the hell not. Twisted family secret that involves as much inbreeding as your average Rice or Andrews novel, sure! Fairies! Inbreeding! Both! Good times! The biggest argument against the fairies being real is that when Lisa is kidnapped she's held hostage by her own aunt, cousin, and occasionally her mother... and there's another girl already there and pregnant by the time Lisa is finally taken.* While this happens to give way to my favorite quote of the book, it doesn't exactly scream fairies. Nor does the lone chapter given by Gene's point of view, which hammers home the idea that this guy never stood a chance, raised by a mother who didn't want him, kept hidden away with only his half-sister to keep him company and even that was sporadic at best. Of course he was nutty.
Flip side: Fairies, man. Fairies. Evie 1 knew Phoebe was preggers before she did. The end of the book and the kidnapping. Was this something that Phoebe's brain cooked up due to the stress of giving birth and hearing from Evie again after all that time, or... was there truly fairy magic involved?
* - So I am left wondering this, and it is never addressed as far as I can recall: If Hazel and Evie were spending the summer with Lisa's family, who exactly was going to take care of Gene if Evie hadn't smuggled him along for the ill-fated trip? Was this Hazel's way of attempting to kill him or... what? Also, if Lisa arrived and there was already another girl there, who was taking care of *her* during the summer?
Ultimately it's a creepier read than you might expect, especially given the blurb, although the cover does warn you.
