∎ [PDF] The Burning Girl edition by Claire Messud Literature Fiction eBooks

The Burning Girl edition by Claire Messud Literature Fiction eBooks

Download As PDF : The Burning Girl edition by Claire Messud Literature Fiction eBooks

The Burning Girl edition by Claire Messud Literature Fiction eBooks

This was slow starting. My first thought was, oh dear, now that Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and Zadie Smith's North London novels are so big, Messud is trying to ride the wave with a story about two girls from two different levels of privilege who are initially close but then grow apart. As in the Ferrante and Smith novels, Messud gives the narrator's job to the more privileged--and thus educated--of the girls.

It is that story, but it can be told again and again in different contexts. I got sucked in as I read. Is it my imagination that the writing got better? Anyway, I moved from ticking off the boxes--yup, their closeness as involving imaginative invention, the gradual defection of the less privileged child, the ambivalence of the narrator, the inexplicable resistance of the less privileged (and more interesting) character to closeness with her former friend, and in the end--. Well, this isn't the place to reveal the ending. But it follows the pattern.

But Messud is a fine novelist and the characters and descriptions get more layered as the story progresses. Along the way she claims her own fictional landscape. My one quibble is that I don't find the narrator quite believable, but since Messud was widely and wrongly, I think, criticized for writing an "unsympathetic" protagonist and narrator in The Woman Upstairs, I'm reluctant to follow up on this criticism. It may be the fault of my reading.

For the record, I loved The Woman Upstairs, thought it was gutsy and aesthetically compelling of the author to have given us a passive, insecure protagonist. What is incredible to me is that so many readers thought she was somehow wrong to do so.


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The Burning Girl edition by Claire Messud Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

This is really a 3.5. It is a thoughtful and introspective coming-of-age novel with a tease or hint of whodunit. You know from the beginning that "something" happened but not the evolution or conclusion. The writing is spare and clean, both meant as compliments, without a lot of flowery or extraneous descriptive language so that when such descriptions appear, you welcome them. Stories told in the first person from the standpoint of a young (tween, then teen) protagonist are not easy to write, and this one is very contemporary, something imagined to have happened in just the last few years. I found it more of a "process" book -- one where the journey, rather than the destination was most notable, and felt a bit let down by the ambiguity and loose ends left to one's imagination at the end.
This book rang so true to me in so many ways.
Most girls grow up experiencing all the glory, villainous, fearful, treacherous feelings,Juju explains in this,narrative about how it feels to be a young woman aware of her periphery life as a female growing up. Its heartache, the strange power achieved by simply growing into womanhood, along with the ever present sinister fears we have all felt as vulnerable females in a,world dominated by the physically bigger and stronger males that make up our lives. Not because we are weak, but possibly because we are strong but our bodies are physically smaller than men . If I could sum this story up.
, it's not so much about the events that take place as it is the transformation that takes place inside Juju as,she begins to understand the workings of our world.

A sort of modern day Tree Grows in Brooklyn, it is a,story about a girl and how it feels to become a,woman .
I really liked Claire Messud's book "The Woman Upstairs" so I was excited about "The Burning Girl". After reading the free sample download offered by I was inspired to read more so I bought the book at $12.99, which price went down to $9.32 a few days later (made me mad). After passing the free sample point, the writing seemed to deteriorate. The author simply "told" and did not "show" who the characters or situations were. She kept saying that main character Julia knew other main character Cassie better than anyone but she never showed how/why so I never got the sense this was true. I never got the sense of magic the girls experienced at the old asylum during their last summer together. Most of the characters were unlikable except for Rudy, his dog Bessie and Julia's father. In the book's favor and the reason I gave it two stars, it was written in way to compel (fool) me to read it to the end to find out what happened. I was disappointed and am not happy the version was discounted just a few days after I purchased it at the regular price.
Three out of five stars is generous for this novel. Although the general outline of the plot is a good idea for a story, this was not executed well enough to be a good novel. The characters were fairly 2-dimensional, the plot was predictable and situations are overloaded with exposition. Julia also seems to retain a sense of possession and territory over her friend as they grow and she overestimates their relationship over time. The ending especially emphasizes the overestimation with needless exposition. Because they lack the same closeness and caring than the past, the exposition of their friendship falls flat instead of being beautiful introspection. Overall, disappointed.
This is the second book I have read by the author, and again I was underwhelmed. The subject matter has the makings of a great book, as almost every girl can relate to the situations friendship, boys, jealousy. But in the end the whole was unsatisfying. So many unanswered questions, but not in a way that make the book better. They just make the reader frustrated. Even the title and cover were a bait and switch. When you finally put together why Messud titled the book "The Burning Girl", again just frustrating. And don't even get me started on why so many novels include the word "Girl"!
This was slow starting. My first thought was, oh dear, now that Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and Zadie Smith's North London novels are so big, Messud is trying to ride the wave with a story about two girls from two different levels of privilege who are initially close but then grow apart. As in the Ferrante and Smith novels, Messud gives the narrator's job to the more privileged--and thus educated--of the girls.

It is that story, but it can be told again and again in different contexts. I got sucked in as I read. Is it my imagination that the writing got better? Anyway, I moved from ticking off the boxes--yup, their closeness as involving imaginative invention, the gradual defection of the less privileged child, the ambivalence of the narrator, the inexplicable resistance of the less privileged (and more interesting) character to closeness with her former friend, and in the end--. Well, this isn't the place to reveal the ending. But it follows the pattern.

But Messud is a fine novelist and the characters and descriptions get more layered as the story progresses. Along the way she claims her own fictional landscape. My one quibble is that I don't find the narrator quite believable, but since Messud was widely and wrongly, I think, criticized for writing an "unsympathetic" protagonist and narrator in The Woman Upstairs, I'm reluctant to follow up on this criticism. It may be the fault of my reading.

For the record, I loved The Woman Upstairs, thought it was gutsy and aesthetically compelling of the author to have given us a passive, insecure protagonist. What is incredible to me is that so many readers thought she was somehow wrong to do so.