A moving account of how a friendship can go wrong.
THE BURNING GIRL
Claire Messud
Hachette
By PAT THWAITES
Set in a small American town, this story begins with Julia, the young narrator, recalling a favourite haunt from her past, when she and her friend, Cassie, were inseparable and thought they always would be.
They had met at nursery school and Julia couldn't "remember a time when I didn't know her . . . and think of her, in some ways, as mine''. Readers also know from the beginning that this friendship was ill-fated. Two years have elapsed since any contact was made, and hints of darker themes than a broken friendship are signalled.
The girls went to the same schools, knew the same people and lived in a close enough proximity to one another to share rides to school. Their family circumstances differed, but not enough to make either girl uncomfortable. Julia's family home was large and her parents professionals. Cassie lived with her mother, Bev, a hospice care nurse, in a "perfect little Cape Cod house on the outside, with a careful skirt of lawn out front, a little skimpy and each year more weedy''.
Descriptions of Cassie's physical environment echo what might be the secrets within. The Burning Girl is 17-year-old Julia's moving account of how a close friendship can go wrong, and this story rang true, but one of the reservations I had about the book was believing that some of the elegant descriptive passages and sophisticated insights into human behaviour could have been produced by such a youthful narrator, even one who was a straight A student.
I couldn't get fully absorbed in Julia's childhood descriptions of their happy times together, but as the friendship deteriorated and the story became darker, it held my interest more. The book seemed more geared for the young adult market, where I have no doubt the quality of writing and authentic depiction of the hurts caused by dysfunctional friendships would find a ready audience.
Patricia Thwaites is a retired Dunedin schoolteacher.
