A review by savvy999
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

challenging dark funny informative medium-paced

3.25

For a preoccupation with dead girls, it seems to be more focused on the living than anything which is understandable given the direction it ends up going. pointed genre and literary criticism but seems to lag around the edges, with the through line never as tight as it aught to be.  only scratches the surface when it comes to its “thesis” . Dwells long in pop culture and Joan Didion, and although illuminating and expressing some of my concerns with Didion’s mystique and deifying deftly; feels on occasion more like reliance than interrogation. The writing is clear and compelling  but maybe purposefully scattered. Definitely a work to revisit at a different time. 

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