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A review by incrediblemelk
The Elizas by Sara Shepard
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The theme of doppelgängers is the driving force of this book, which alternate between the perspective of forthcoming debut novelist Eliza and excerpts from the novel that she’s about to publish called ‘The Dots’, which seems to be strongly autobiographical.
Eliza begins the novel having just almost drowned which her family believe is a suicidal impulse stemming from a brain tumour, but Eliza is sure she was pushed; the story is basically her trying to figure out who pushed her. A strong atmosphere of paranoia hangs over the novel, which is set in contemporary LA and Palm Springs but has a kind of retro vibe that seems to mingle the 1920s and the 1950s.
This unreal quality hangs over the whole story and came to be the thing I appreciated most about the book. Eliza is deeply unpleasant at the start, with an offputting combination of apathy and solipsism: she’s the paradigmatic unreliable narrator. But this unsettled vibe also springs from the uncanniness of the doppelgänger theme: about being uncertain if something is real or fictional or invented or hallucinated.
The resolution when it comes is surprisingly prosaic, although I enjoyed the way that it seems to rear back into Eliza‘s life even after she believes things have gone back to normal, which was an agreeably cinematic “is the monster really dead?” moment.
You could almost also take this overdetermined Hollywood retro-gothic quality as a kind of Lemony Snicket parody, which I appreciated; think Daniel Handler’s books really deserve to be parodied. There was that one of his that I read that was shithouse. I’ve forgotten what it was but I’m sure I wrote a review of it somewhere.
But then isn’t Sarah Shepard the author of Pretty Little Liars, which I felt that that shithouse Daniel Handler book was kind of in the same vein of? I don’t know – maybe there was some kind of turf war happening in this novel.
Eliza begins the novel having just almost drowned which her family believe is a suicidal impulse stemming from a brain tumour, but Eliza is sure she was pushed; the story is basically her trying to figure out who pushed her. A strong atmosphere of paranoia hangs over the novel, which is set in contemporary LA and Palm Springs but has a kind of retro vibe that seems to mingle the 1920s and the 1950s.
This unreal quality hangs over the whole story and came to be the thing I appreciated most about the book. Eliza is deeply unpleasant at the start, with an offputting combination of apathy and solipsism: she’s the paradigmatic unreliable narrator. But this unsettled vibe also springs from the uncanniness of the doppelgänger theme: about being uncertain if something is real or fictional or invented or hallucinated.
The resolution when it comes is surprisingly prosaic, although I enjoyed the way that it seems to rear back into Eliza‘s life even after she believes things have gone back to normal, which was an agreeably cinematic “is the monster really dead?” moment.
You could almost also take this overdetermined Hollywood retro-gothic quality as a kind of Lemony Snicket parody, which I appreciated; think Daniel Handler’s books really deserve to be parodied. There was that one of his that I read that was shithouse. I’ve forgotten what it was but I’m sure I wrote a review of it somewhere.
But then isn’t Sarah Shepard the author of Pretty Little Liars, which I felt that that shithouse Daniel Handler book was kind of in the same vein of? I don’t know – maybe there was some kind of turf war happening in this novel.