Flip Turn

by Paula Eisenstein

In Paula Eisenstein’s spare and provocative first novel, a young girl must come to terms with the discovery that her brother killed another young girl. Feeling alienated and not knowing how to ask for help, she decides that suppressing her sexual development will ensure she doesn’t do the same thing.

In Flip Turn, Eisenstein has created an unforgettable narrator whose success as an athlete leaves her conflicted about the attention she receives. She fears it will remind people of what her brother did and draw negative attention to her family. As her swimming triumphs lead her to the Olympic trials, she recounts her own sexual abuse at the hands of a swim coach and must decide if she should give up her passion to try to find a more normal life.

Genres: Canada

194 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

Paula is a Toronto area writer. Her first novel Flip Turn came out in October 2012 with Mansfield Press.

Reviews

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good fiction has truth and integrity. This has it and I applaud it.

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A startling account of a young girl’s abandonment of self in order to satisfy the expectations of an overbearing mother whose emotional needs sabotage the whole family. The story is written like a diary, but, there’s something essential lacking at its core: the narrator lacks an authentic emotional response to even the most horrifying events. Sexual abuse by a swimming coach fails to elicit a response. Her brother’s act of murder fails to elicit a response. Instead we have a girl who is disconnected from her emotions and putting all her time and energy into excelling at school and sport in the hopes of pleasing her mother and redeeming the family. The writing style is unorthodox and threw me for a loop in the beginning – so many what I believe are called dangling modifiers and misplaced modifiers as well as unusual turns of phrase. These were consistent throughout the novel and so I assume they were intentional, but, I found their presence puzzling. Fortunately, they failed to eclipse the story. A disturbing novel, but, I commend the writer for having the courage to face her demons and create such an insightful and authentic read. Well done.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book as part of a GoodReads give-a-way. It is the only reason I bothered to finish the book. You can't write an honest review without reading the whole book.

I did not like the book.

Pay no attention to the description of this book. That would be the story I was expecting to read. But the only things that match up with the reality of the book is that the never named narrator is a successful swimmer whose brother killed a girl. The rest is simply missing. Instead you get a muddled series of bits of a teenage girl's life. There is no depth to the narrator and no reason for the reader to have an emotional connection to her.
The writing itself didn't help. The narrator rambles on in a stream-of-consciousness style. It bounces around from one event to another without a real story coming through. That could have been dealt with if the author didn't set roadblocks in the flow. Each chapter was broken into smaller segments of several paragraphs with a title in larger and darker print in all capitals between each section.

Give this one a pass.