I cried. Not because the ending is sad at all but because of how well it was written...in the last page Lansen talks to 'the reader' about finishing a book.....as a writer finishing a book and also how it feels to be a reader finishing a book...and she 'gets it'....
"You hold this book, our story, in your hands now with considerably more pages on the left side than on the right. Like you, I've been there a thousand times.....we both know, writer and reader, like the proverbial sand in the hourglass, the seconds on the shot clock, the story is over".
This book is amazing. It is written like an autobiography and it is so hard to remember that it is fiction..it just seems real. As much as I loved Walls 'The Glass Castle'.....that was real and the auhor was writing from what she knew..her memories and her experiences......well written but real.
The Girls is total fiction yet is written so well that the reader believes it to be real....I'm not sure if I am expressing this in the way I want to but I feel Lansen has this incredible talent as a writer....to write fiction in quite such a believable way.....to be so real that the reader falls for it again and again....
I can't tell you how many times I had to tell Lloyd about things 'The Girls' had done or said in the book...things that happened to them (like at immigration)....and I am telling Lloyd this as if it is real....I am disgusted by things that happened to them and feel so bad for them and yet it isn't even real!
This is an amazing book. This author has REAL TALENT.
Read it!
PS I have to thank my Mom for telling me about this book because despite it being a Canadian novel, I had never heard about it before she mentioned it being discussed in Richard and Judys books club....
Thanks Mom!
