PNA | Book Review: The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes

At first this suspense thriller/horror might seem confusing and incoherent – that is until you realise that the main character, Harper Curtis, makes use of time travel.

 

He finds a House in the Depression-era Chicago that allows him to travel between 1931 and 1993 – something seemingly borrowed from a typical Stephen King novel. 

Over 60 decades, Harper visits his “shining girls”, first as little girls and then again years later, to kill them. All these girls possess an inner glow, a shine that Harper has to put out. 

 

Beukes makes good use of visual descriptions to decorate the murder scenes and the discovery of the victims. Her purpose here was to emphasize the violence found in these scenes daily, although it might shock the avid horror reader.

 

 

The time jumps are a bit sloppy, leaving the reader often lost and having to page back to check previous dates and their happenings. However, Beukes’s narration manages to compel the reader to keep reading and it is essentially Kirby - the girl who was supposed to die at Harper’s hand, but survived – that becomes the enchantment to this novel. Her survival after Harper’s attack fuelled her to find him and it is this shining girl that turns the hunt around.

 

Interesting to note, the rights to this book has been bought by Leonardo DiCaprio’s company Appian Way and it is set to be televised as a series. 

Beukes was very happy about this and noted that she declined a movie offer in favour of the series. 

 

 

She feels that the shining girls are the most important characters in the story and that a television series will allow sufficient submerging into the lives of these special girls – which would possibly allow the readers/viewers the chance to view the girls from the murderer’s view and possibly being able to associate with him.

 

Beukes, originally from Cape Town, spent two years in Chicago and researched the city with the help of two local researchers, which allowed the realistic setting for its time. 

 

All-in-all, The Shining Girls fulfills its purpose – to entertain, stimulate the imagination, raise the blood pressure ever so slightly and leave the reader wanting more to be said.