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A review by bookishwelshie
I Am Not Your Final Girl by Claire C. Holland
4.0
I felt like reading a poetry collection and right from the introduction I knew I Am Not Your Final Girl was going to be an important, empowering, read.
Each poem is told from the perspective of a different "final girl" from horror stories. If you are familiar with the plots, and each final girl character, you will get more out of reading this. As an avid horror movie fanatic, this unique collection really appealed to me. The characters’ voices are all captured remarkably well, even in the shortest of poems.
A line that really stuck out to me was in the Sally from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre poem:
"There is nothing else in this world like realising you’re going to live and not being sure you can".
That one quote succinctly sums up a lot of these characters’ experiences.
Classics like Rosemary’s Baby are covered, and also more modern films like The Descent. This is a broad range of strong female characters who survived the odds until the very end. I highly recommend this collection to any horror fan, as I do think a familiarity with the characters would be essential. I am very pleased that my two favourite horror heroines - Laurie Strode from Halloween and Clarice from Silence Of The Lambs - were included.
The only critique is that it could be considered as kind of one note, as the poems only focus on a quite similar type of character throughout. The fast pace of the collection makes it feel not too repetitive though.
"We’re strong and slutty, quiet and confident, outspoken and sarcastic, and we don’t feel like smiling because we have work to do. We defy definition. And we’re not going down without a fight."
Each poem is told from the perspective of a different "final girl" from horror stories. If you are familiar with the plots, and each final girl character, you will get more out of reading this. As an avid horror movie fanatic, this unique collection really appealed to me. The characters’ voices are all captured remarkably well, even in the shortest of poems.
A line that really stuck out to me was in the Sally from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre poem:
"There is nothing else in this world like realising you’re going to live and not being sure you can".
That one quote succinctly sums up a lot of these characters’ experiences.
Classics like Rosemary’s Baby are covered, and also more modern films like The Descent. This is a broad range of strong female characters who survived the odds until the very end. I highly recommend this collection to any horror fan, as I do think a familiarity with the characters would be essential. I am very pleased that my two favourite horror heroines - Laurie Strode from Halloween and Clarice from Silence Of The Lambs - were included.
The only critique is that it could be considered as kind of one note, as the poems only focus on a quite similar type of character throughout. The fast pace of the collection makes it feel not too repetitive though.
"We’re strong and slutty, quiet and confident, outspoken and sarcastic, and we don’t feel like smiling because we have work to do. We defy definition. And we’re not going down without a fight."