Hmmm. The problem with this book is that it almost doesn't suck, but then you realize it does, and you're sick with the realization of how much of your life you lost before abandoning it in disgust. Actually, I listened to it while commuting to work, so I would have lost that time anyway, but still.

Goodreader "Lormac" posted an elegant and witty summation of why the book is so...so...flaccid yet stiff. If you're considering wasting a bit of your life reading it, you may want to read Lormac's review first.

I wish I had. ( )

It starts out with Christmas with a charming family, genteel poverty, but with friends and love. Then you learn the mother is going to marry a man she has been corresponding with. It's based on a true story so it's not a spoiler to say you know this isn't going to end well, and it doesn't.

Then the story shifts to a woman reporter covering the case, and the friends she makes and the effect the case and the trial have on her. She is determined to get justice for them. At times she is almost too nice and good, which makes sense because she's one of the invented characters, but it did pull me out of the story. The details are interesting but it's clear this is a crime story that's haunted the writer, and the style she chose to tell it is odd. It's very formally written, with people speaking in old fashioned phrases, yet parts of it are poetic and beautiful.

After thinking about it I'm lowering it to 4 stars because it was unsatisfying. ( )

I feel two ways about this novel - no actually, three ways.

#1 I love Jayne Ann Phllips and even mediocre JAP is light years better than so much shit that's out there, so there's that.

#2 Beautifully, lyrically written novel about a heinous real-life crime that took place In West Virginia and the intrepid young reporter from Chicago who makes it her life's mission to bring the perpetrator to justice. The first section of novel - which tells the story of the crime is heartbreaking.

#3 The love story and the device of having one of the dead victims flit through the novel drove me crazy.

This is clearly a story that has haunted Phillips for a long time and I am not sure why she chose to tell it this way with these characters. It's very old-fashioned in some ways, the dialogue is very formal, and the beauty and the pace of the novel, the way everything unfolds, is both gripping and kind of repellent at the same time. ( )

This is just the kind of novel that usually attracts my interest - namely, a true crime story set in the American mid-west in the early 1930s. Harry Powers was a serial killer who preyed upon lonely women he met through a matrimonIal agency. The novel follows the most heinous of his crimes - the murder of Asta Eicher, a widow, and her three young children. The first quarter of the novel immerses us in the day to day life of the Eicher family, including the back story of the adultery and tragic death of Asta's husband. It's a very effective opening, getting the reader to identify with the family, thereby rendering their murders even more shocking.
The rest of the novel follows a young female journalist as she investigates the murders and follows the trial and conviction of Harry Powers, the murderer. My problems with the novel grew during this part of the story where Jayne Anne Phillips becomes far more interested in Emily, the journalist's relationship with a middle aged bank manager and her friendship with a gay fellow reporter. Since the killer is arrested very early on, there is no mystery or suspenseful manhunt and the trial is also a foregone conclusion. It seems that Phillips is more interested in the difficulties of transgressive relationships in 1930s America (Emily's with the banker unhappily married to a sick wife, the male reporter's burgeoning love for the Eicher's ex-lodger) than she is with the murder case. All of these are Jayne Anne Phillip's own fictional characters and I didn't find them anywhere near as interesting as the real life characters. Furthermore, I don't know if she is accurately recording the way people in that time and place spoke, but I found the dialogue stilted and unnatural. ( )

Great story, bad writing! ( )