Review: The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls

By Lauren Beukes

Mullholland Books June 2014

375 pages

From the library 

Harper Curtis believes that he has a mission. He must kill each of the shining girls, young women whose eyes hold a special spark. But Curtis is not your run of the mill serial killer. He can travel through time to find each one of his victims. Kirby Mazrachi was not supposed to survive his vicious attack. But her faithful dog and determination kept her alive...barely. Now Kirby is using her tenacity and burgeoning journalistic skills to track down the man who tried to murder her. 

This book is obviously fiction. The idea of someone traveling through time via a magical, seemingly living house seems preposterous. But it also gives Kirby's story an added layer of terror: if your stalker can travel through time, how will you find him? And how can you ever escape him?

Lauren Beukes has a skill for writing multiple time periods well. The "shining girls" are a diverse group of women, each talented in a certain way. One of them is a brilliant scientist, another is a woman who literally shines as she dances, and another is an African American mother who is shattering racial stereotypes. We really get to know each of these women, although we know that none of them will have a happy ending. Beukes is an author who excels at writing historical fiction or writing a thriller and by mixing them seamlessly, we readers get the best of both worlds.

In the midst of the craziness, we get a small, quiet story of a friendship becoming something more. As Kirby searches for answers, she becomes an intern at a newspaper under the tutelage of Dan. He was the reporter who covered her case, but he now works at the sports desk because he went too far trying to figure out what happened to her. These two characters seem incredibly real - Kirby has been wounded both physically and mentally by her attack and she is simultaneously tough and extremely vulnerable. Dan begins as a sort of big brother figure, guiding her through the ins and outs of reporting and trying to keep her out of trouble. Of course, he eventually realizes that his motives are much different from those of a big brother, but he cares enough to not want to cause her more pain. Their tentative relationship is one of the highlights of a carefully created story.

There are a lot of "whys" that are not explained in this book, which can be a positive for some readers and a negative or others. Curtis stumbles upon this magical house and never really finds out why it works the way that it does, why he is the one the house has chosen, or who or what is behind the magic of time travel. The why is not necessarily the point of the story, but having so much time from Curtis' point of view without any real explanations can become frustrating.

The Shining Girls is a hybrid of all the stories you love best - friendship becoming something more, a meticulously detailed historical story, and a creepy thriller that makes you keep the lights on when you go to bed. Lauren Beuekes is a very talented writer and Kirby's story is one that I will not soon forget.