A review by carolynf
Once Upon a River, by Bonnie Jo Campbell

3.0

By the time you get to the second half of the book, the protagonist seems slightly less psychotic. But during the whole first half there is a lot of sex and violence that just seemed really random, and she was fairly emotionless about all of it. She doesn't like to talk at all really, REALLLY likes to shoot, and always has to be close enough to her river to smell it. All that is fine. But for most of the book she is closed off from other people, even considering her age and the shit that she's been through. She bonds with her dad (kind of?) in the beginning of the book, and a dying old man at the end of the book, and everyone else along the way is just evaluated for possible resources. Combine that with her compulsion to kill animals and butcher them, way more frequently than is actually necessary for food, and the effect is just creepy. A distinctive heroine, but a creepy one - I kept thinking about Gone Girl throughout. I couldn't tell how much the reader is supposed to see her as a free spirit versus a dangerously disconnected person.