Cartwheel

by Jennifer duBois

Written with the riveting storytelling and moral seriousness of authors like Emma Donoghue, Adam Johnson, Ann Patchett, and Curtis Sittenfeld, Cartwheel is a suspenseful and haunting novel of an American foreign exchange student arrested for murder, and a father trying to hold his family together.
 
When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters: the colorful buildings, the street food, the handsome, elusive man next door. Her studious roommate Katy is a bit of a bore, but Lily didn’t come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans.
 
Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s asking. As the case takes shape—revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her: the media, her family, the man who loves her and the man who seeks her conviction. With mordant wit and keen emotional insight, Cartwheel offers a prismatic investigation of the ways we decide what to see—and to believe—in one another and ourselves.
 
Jennifer duBois’s debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction and was honored by the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program. In Cartwheel, duBois delivers a novel of propulsive psychological suspense and rare moral nuance. Who is Lily Hayes? What happened to her roommate? No two readers will agree. Cartwheel will keep you guessing until the final page, and its questions about how much we really know about ourselves will linger well beyond.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Audiobook, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Book Club

416 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2013

About the author

Jennifer duBois is the recipient of a 2013 Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2012 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award. Her debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction. Jennifer earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Missouri Review, Salon, The Kenyon Review, Cosmopolitan, Narrative, ZYZZYVA, and has been anthologized in Imaginary Oklahoma, Byliner Originals’ Esquire Four and Narrative 4’s How To Be A Man project. A native of western Massachusetts, Jennifer currently teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.

Reviews

[kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not a compelling read. I feel like the author is too busy showing me she is smart(perhaps like Lily) instead of attempting to involve me in the story. I don't like that. At. All.
Proving to readers that you have an extensive and yet overblown vocabulary with which you are insistent on impressing them isn't good writing, in my opinion.
It is also difficult to keep the thread of dialogue going as every single character would have these pages long musings involving the past, or their feelings, or the way the light looks filtered through the window, in the middle of conversations. I would get to the end of dialogue and have to go back and re-read the pages without the ponderings just to wrap my head around what is actually being said. I do not think people actually talk in this way, with huge pauses while they go over things in their head and the other person just sits there static, doing nothing until they get done ruminating and deign to speak.
This should be a book that I'd really enjoy, something of a mystery, but it is told in such a way that I simply don't know any of the characters by the end of the story. They are all still murky and nebulous and lacking definition.
They are all complex with different problems and world views, but it still adds up to a lot of nothing for me.
There are bits that seem to me to be plot holes or else sloppy writing which would seem odd since this author would appear to select each word after excessive consideration and the assistance of a thesaurus.
At one point Lily is fired for supposedly causing a scene at her workplace, but she had a discussion in a ladies room, hardly what one would call a scene. There was no screaming or yelling, just a discussion which I wouldn't consider a scene, particularly since it took place in a more private location. And that seems careless.
There are hints and bits that are simply left swaying in the breeze. There are so many viewpoints, but one of them should have been Katy. At least to let us know who she was as she didn't seem to be what everyone thought she was. For me, there was an undertone of her not actually being very nice or perhaps it would be more correct to say she was hiding her true self while Lily was being herself, but that, as much of the book, went nowhere.
Having said all that, and the reason this does just barely get two stars instead of one is that I was still affected by the story and felt such anguish and disgust over what was happening to Lily.
Even though the author tried, I never quite understood why the prosecutor would try to implicate someone for a crime they obviously didn't commit. It made no sense and the author didn't manage to make it make sense. The stuff about his weird ex-wife didn't clarify anything for me and made me think he was merely evil.
The ending is abrupt with no closure for anyone. The trial is barely mentioned.
I don't even know exactly what story the author was trying to tell me. There are far too many points of view and none of them bring much to the story.
I don't believe I would ever read this author again.

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's so rare that i review a book that is actually out, what with all my netgalleying and ARC-hoarding. but this one has been out for ages and i am only just now getting around to the ARC i hoarded last year. but this means i can say to you - go and get this now!! you don't have to wait 4 months for me to float my review and remind you that you wanted to read it.

because i loved it, and i feel like it has been so long since i truly loved a book that i want to crow and dance and maybe… do a cartwheel.

this book is inspired by the amanda knox case. and if that is a case you paid attention to, maybe this book won't be for you what it was for me. i only glanced at headlines as they shouted in my face, so all i know is that she may or may not have killed her roommate when she was studying abroad in italy. period.

this book is about a 21-year-old girl named lily who goes to buenos aires for a semester abroad, and becomes the prime suspect when her roommate katy is brutally murdered in the room they shared. the story shifts between the perspectives of lily, her father, the prosecutor convinced of her guilt, and lily's boyfriend sebastien lecompte, both before and after the murder. it is an exquisite puzzle of fact and speculation, misunderstandings and lies, posturing and psychological manipulation, artifice and reality, and i was completely riveted throughout.

the best thing about this book is lily. good lord, what a wonderfully-written and insufferable character. lily is that kind of super-confident and careless entitled american girl - smart enough to bluster her way through pseudo-intellectual discussions and debates, but also so self-involved as to be horribly naive about how she is perceived and how her actions affect other people. she goes through life patting herself on the back for being progressive and tolerant in her beliefs, in love with the world and completely unaware of when she is being off-putting or offensive. she has that college-student mentality that is figuring it all out. not just for herself, but for everybody else. she is discovering things that no one has ever before discovered, and her thoughts are wildly original and she scoffs at the pedestrian and the banal, young enough to not know that this attitude is, itself, banal. it is perfect in all of those uncomfortably familiar details. and her father's embarrassed/indulgent assessment of her is also staggeringly perfect. all the minor details in this - all the quiet moments of contemplation and "what did we do wrong??" as insalubrious aspects of her character come out in the media coverage and the character assassination begins. the words and actions of a selfish girl, generally innocuous under ordinary circumstances, look much more incriminating after a crime.

she really has handled lily very well. although we see how wounded she feels when she is misunderstood, how she is well-intentioned but clumsy, how her actions are frequently attempts to be unobtrusive, she comes across to others as indifferent, irreverent, selfish. she protects herself with the armor of studied insouciance, and she really feels like she is being some kind of social revolutionary with her laissez-faire attitude and the excitement of her shiny new independence and her appreciation of the grotesque.

but all of this causes problems for her. her arrogance about her facility with the language leads her to confidently submit to an interrogation in spanish, and once she is detained, she is so stunned that the world is not treating her with the same indulgent acceptance to which she has become accustomed, she just shuts down and submits.

and sebastien. ugh. what a sympathetic but maddening character. a bazillionaire orphan living next door to the girls in a huge crumbling house filled with sheet-covered furniture, hiding hurt behind persona, behind exhausting irony, behind lies and what he sees as a kind of elitist charm. not as smart as he thinks he is, but he manages to land lily, even though she sees right through him.

and her father. almost every observation he makes about lily is heartbreaking and real and made me want to call my dad and apologize for how insufferable i must have been during my teenage/early twenties-years.

as the story goes on and you begin to see the cracks on both sides, you will come to your own conclusions. like any situation in which you were not yourself present, you're never going to know what really happened, even when you are being led by a novelist of such powerful gifts. unreliable narrators, self-preservation, misunderstandings - everything adds up to a giant question mark. but it's a wonderful journey to that question mark, and although there are so many amazing passages in here that clawed at my heart, i will leave those for you to discover.

again, i just have the boring gray arc, but i am so in love with that cover, it's not even funny. i am going to have to buy a "real" copy of it and soon.

come to my blog!

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although there's been discussion that this novel is based on the Amanda Knox story, it is more accurate to say that it is inspired by it, and I think that if you go into it with that approach, you won't be comparing for authenticity. DuBois has taken many liberties with the familiar Knox chronicle, so that it is a decidedly different story. It reads like a mosaic of a family and a haunting labyrinth of mirrors.

American exchange student Lily Hayes, on the verge of 21, travels to Buenos Aires to study abroad for a semester. She plans to immerse herself in the culture, improve her Spanish, and re-define herself. As it is, she feels that her parents perceive her as an afterthought. Tragedy struck the family before she was born. Her parents lost a 2 ½ year-old daughter, Janie, to a blood dyscrasia, and now, she and her younger sister, Anna, feel like props in their parents lives, a consolation prize to the sacred and forever 2 ½ year-old sister.

Lily and her roommate, Katy Kellers, live with a host family, and Lily feels the prickliness of being poorly appraised by the family, and is always getting in trouble with them, due to her guileless naïveté. She begins a romance with the mercurial neighbor, Sebastien LeCompte, another fall-out of tragedy. His parents, who were spies, died in a plane crash, leaving him a young millionaire in an old, crumbling house next door to Lily and Katy. Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered; Lily is the prime suspect. These details and events are all revealed very early in the novel, and set up the meat of the story's riddle.

The novel unfolds gradually, even leisurely, as DuBois takes the time to pause and dig deeply into each character. The chapters alternate between characters and time periods, and the reader sees circumstances and events through a prism of different eyes and sensibilities and prejudices, and through the personal histories of Lily, her parents, the prosecutor, Sebastien, and Anna. There is tragedy or fierce rejection/abandonment in everyone's past, and how that affects each one's judgment and awareness is germane to the evolution of the story.

As Lily says of her parents, Andrew and Maureen, about their divorce:

"...when it finally came, after years of existing in a collective state of medicated and vacant life-tolerance, they merely drifted off into separate ethers, and that was that." And the death of Janie:

"...life was short...yes, a terrible thing had happened...long, long ago and one day everyone would be dead and nobody would get any extra points for having hated life so much. Because Andrew and Maureen did hate life, really; they were just always very polite about it.

CARTWHEEL does not fit the mold of genre crime fiction. If you are looking for a pulse-pounding, propulsive, cat-and-mouse thriller, this likely won't satisfy that desire. Dubois' novel progresses at a dilatory pace. it is a psychological character study and a penetrating reflection of what it is to face the impossible odds of life. How do you reconcile the immutable past with the unreliable present?

I don't think that Lily's guilt or innocence is even central to DuBois' purpose in writing the story. More importantly, it's about Lily as seen through a spectrum of various observers--for example, her "inappropriate" behaviors--a cartwheel, a kiss, a cold reaction to murder. The fact of Lily's guilt or innocence is not the apogee of this novel at all. Rather, it is built on the question of perception: How do we perceive others, and how do others perceive us? How much of that is determined by how we see ourselves? In the hands of the prosecutor, Eduardo Campos, he has the power to force his will on others. In the case of Lily, her carelessness and reckless free-spiritedness could destroy her life. She is powerless against the forces of a foreign country or the capricious media's thirst for tawdry scandal.

As Eduardo imagines saying to Lily:

"We must act as though our understanding, as limited as it might be, is the most panoramic and complete understanding possible. We must act as though everything in this life counts; as though we only have one shot to get things right. We must act as though nobody would see the truth if we did not see the truth."

There's a set of facts and there's forensic evidence, and then there is the truth. Do the facts support the truth? Or are they two different organisms? CARTWHEEL weighs facts that reflect remembrance, and evasions that simulate lies-- to safeguard the truth. This compelling book, throughout, ponders the uncertainty that dwells within us, and contemplates how we ache for merciful hope against the most ruthless odds.

[Carol · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was supposed to be "loosely based" on the Amanda Knox story. "Loosely"? Change the names, change the city, and it was regurgitated from the news practically word for word except, of course for the author's pretentious word choices throughout the book -- phloem, ingots, scherzo, atavistic, ungulate, syllogism, sybaritic, dictum, mirabile, pentimento, quotidian, caesura, decretory, etc., etc. The writing is pretentious and ostentatious "faint crepitation of a leaf against the window". Oh, dear.

It is also hard to believe the author has ever really been in Buenos Aries. Her descriptions are of a run-down, third world city and Buenos Aries is anything but that. She also mentioned that it would be unsafe for a young girl to run in the streets because she would probably be attacked. Buenos Aries is a beautiful, modern, European-looking city that is clean and perfectly safe in most areas as any American city is. One of the characters mentioned that "there is probably no metro system." It has a metro system more thorough than any US city except for maybe New York.

There was no way to read this book without constantly comparing it to the news of Amanda's ordeal in Italy, so that I always knew what would happen on the next page. It was like "filling in the blanks."

Total waste of time for me. The true story was a better story!

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 2 out of 5]

“That's an applicable life lesson, my boy,' he'd said. 'Nobody is really paying attention to you. Most people don't really get this. They think they must count more to other people than other people count to them. They can't believe the disregard could truly be mutual.”
― Jennifer duBois, Cartwheel



I had a difficult time with this one. Maybe it is because I have read similiar books and not all that long ago. For whatever reason I was not able to really get into this book in the way I had thought I would.

It seems books about female friends, one being accused of murdering the other are quite popular these days. And "The Dangerous Girls" is among my all time favorites so I can see why. I had heard about Cartwheel and was anxious to read it. While not awful, it was not the best read for me. Here's why:

Some of the wording in this book was confusing. There was this game I used to play with family and friends way back when called "Dictionary". Someone would look up a word that nobody knew the meaning of and everyone else would write down a "fake" definition. Then the person who had looked up the word, would read all the definitions including the real one and everyone would try to guess which one was the real meaning.

In Cartwheel there were so many words I did not know the meaning of, any "Dictionary" player could just get some of those words here. And I see by some of the reviews there are others who felt the same way.

I like to think I know words pretty well but this was something else again. And I just felt it took away from the story a bit.

Then there is the way all the characters, interacted with each other. I just could not get over the affected way they all spoke and I kept saying to myself, "most people do not talk like this". As a result I always knew I was reading a book and could not become immersed in the story.

I did like some things. I was never really sure whether she was innocent or not. The author did a very good job with that and keeps you guessing.

SPOILERS:

I would have liked to know, at the end, what the truth was, given that as I did invest time in reading it. I know these days, many books end in that abstract way leaving the reader to figure it out but in this case I'd have liked to know. I am not as big a fan of these types of endings as others.

At any rate, there were pluses in reading this book and for someone who can get over the issues I mentioned they may find it highly enjoyable. It was not for me.

[Delee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My road to finding and becoming interested in CARTWHEEL was long...

In 2008, I read a book called The Monster of Florence ( about Il Mostro- a serial killer linked to 16 murders which took place in Florence Italy between 1968 and 1985)...and also watched numerous documentaries about the killings. Douglas Preston was one of the authors of The Monster of Florence, and was also in the forefront of my favorite documentaries on the case. I found him very credible and also knew he wrote The Relic- which I loved as a movie.

I was flipping around the channels on my TV and saw him being interviewed for something unrelated which turned out to be the Amanda Knox case. I was curious to why he would be involved, so I left the program on and was instantly hooked. As it turns out the prosecutor in the Amanda Knox case is the same man who made Preston's life and many others such a nightmare. That man is Giuliano Mignini- who I think is the epitome of evil. He is a man who sees satanic conspiracies everywhere he looks- crazy people have no place in positions of power, and he is a whole lot of crazy!

I normally stay away from watching, highly publicized trials like Knox's , but because of my prior knowledge, it kind of sucked me in. When I read a few articles on Cartwheel-a book loosely based on her case- I knew I would have to read it!





Setting and time period: Buenos Aires- January, February, March, and May

Character POVs: Lily- a pretty, bright, somewhat odd, and naive young girl who’s studying abroad when her roommate Katy dies under mysterious circumstances.

Andrew- Father of three girls- Janie (who died very young), Lily (Andrew's favorite) and Anna (the invisible child). Andrew is a professor of international relations, and is divorced from the children's mother Maureen-although they are still friends.

Sebastien- Lily's boyfriend. Sebastien is a wealthy reclusive young man, who lost his parents in a plane crash. He lives next door to the Carrizos- Lily and Katy's landlords.

Eduardo- The man in charge of solving Katy's murder. Eduardo takes an instant dislike to Lily and her "American ways" he also sees similarities between Lily and his flighty on again off again wife, Maria- which doesn't do Lily any favors.

Plot: CARTWHEEL is told from four different POV, and flips back and forth (the majority of the time)from three different time periods (January, February, and March)

The story opens when Andrew Hayes arrives in Argentina to help his daughter Lily, who was studying abroad, but has now been arrested for the murder of her roommate, Katy- something Andrew is sure she didn't do. Andrew and his ex-wife, Maureen, lost their first daughter to a rare disease when she was a toddler...they can't bare to lose another one.

For those who watched the Amanda Knox trial- this will be something I am sure that you will want to read! For those who didn't- there are enough differences from the true life story to keep you wanting to know what happens to Lily in the end.

Advanced Readers Copy

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

‘Although the themes of this book were loosely inspired by the story of Amanda Knox, this is entirely a work of fiction. None of the characters are real. None of the events ever happened. Nothing in the book should be read as a factual statement about real-life events or people.’

‘Loosely inspired’ would imply that a subject was taken and adapted and molded to fit into a new version of the story. Cartwheel is an echo, a reflection and lacks in any true substantive differences from the headlines other than the location (Italy vs. Argentina). I know next to nothing about the Amanda Knox case as I never followed closely along with the court proceedings, however, even with the paltry details I have gathered I see no true differentiation that would warrant the term ‘loosely inspired’. Cartwheel is at heart a character study but ultimately lacks in creative elements.

The writing style was well-written yet extremely tedious and I found myself setting my print copy aside and opting for the audio version. The excessive use of prose was an obvious intent to place this novel solidly in the realm of ‘literary’ but it gave the story an overstated and exaggerated feel that did more harm than good. The story was told from the point of view of several individuals such as Lily’s dad, her sister Anna, the prosecutor and Lily’s boyfriend Sebastian. Each character is extensively detailed but I felt Lily herself was drawn vaguely in a possible attempt to retain the mystery behind her guilt/innocence. The details from the point of view of the prosecutor were informative but the details regarding his estranged wife felt ultimately unessential and detracted from the story.

The ending was the most underwhelming of all as questions remained unanswered and just like the actual Amanda Knox story, we’re left to decide whether or not to believe in her innocence. The examination of individuals involved was in depth and detailed yet there was an emotional disconnect. So many pages were spent delving into the intricate details of Lily’s actions and how even minor actions transformed others opinions and perceptions of her. It all felt very superfluous compared to the amount of time spent on the trial itself though and the ending was extremely rushed compared to the slower pace we became accustomed to. The fact that so much of Lily’s case was based on those perceptions vs. actual concrete evidence was interesting but made for a very ponderous read. The ultimate duplication of a big news story seems solely as a means for the author to showcase her obvious writing skills but only puts a spotlight on her complete lack of creativity.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cartwheel is very loosely based on the framework of facts from the Amanda Knox case, but that doesn't mean it's a crime thriller or murder mystery. It starts off as a deep dive into the psyches of a few important characters: Lily Hayes (the Knox alter ego), Lily's father Andrew, the prosecutor Eduardo, and Lily's sometime boyfriend Sebastien. I assumed Cartwheel would provide no definite answers (I was wrong about that, I think) and that any conclusions the reader could draw would be based on knowing these characters very, very well, so I welcomed this opportunity. It was fascinating for while and then seemed less so; all this character development meant the story moved at a snail's pace. Plus, the two characters I found most fascinating (Katy and Anna) never had a chance to speak for themselves, and Eduardo was just unrealistic; he belonged in a different novel from the one everyone else was in. The more I ponder the book, though, the more I realize that just about every character was intriguing in his/her own way, including minor characters like Beatriz and the creepy Ignacio. That's a difficult thing for a writer to pull off! I also cannot deny that as the book neared its end, the feelings of dread and powerlessness it engendered were almost unbearable. I'm sure this was Jennifer duBois's intent, and that element of the book was wholly successful.

I've now read both of Jennifer duBois's novels, and my overall feeling is that her writing is extremely impressive but hard to love. I admired both A Partial History of Lost Causes and Cartwheel but cannot honestly say I enjoyed them. Maybe I'm not really meant to. duBois chooses difficult, heavy subjects, and perhaps the best compliment I can pay is that she definitely does them justice.

[LA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yep! 5 stars for me, although I've been putting this book off for months. It's gotten some bum reviews, and when I saw it was supposedly a sort of a Lifetime Movie version of the Amanda Knox case - the gal who was accused, convicted, then released on charges of murdering her roommate in Italy - meh. I didn't wanna. While I felt bad for the real girl that was murdered and was mildly curious about Amanda Knox, it was not something I followed or paid attention to. Call me oblivious, but until reading this novel, I had zero idea why it was entitled Cartwheel!

But I'm so glad I did read this! First off, the language here is intellectual and stimulating. So many popular books today - particularly those with college aged characters - have a fifth grade reading level (check Accelerated Reader or Scholastic websites - you'll see) that I was pleased to find a brighter, wittier syntax for once.

We get an in-depth purview into the feelings and attitude of the prosecuting attorney here, and it makes one wonder how the personal lives of key governmental officials influence those in the legal system. The prosecutor here has a gorgeous, younger wife who is erratic and has left him once. While he cannot believe that she ever married him in the first place, lovely as she is, she can also be scathing and remote. He transfers some of his beliefs about his wife's neuroses - or possibly her personality disorder, as suggested by his friends - onto the accused young lady. While there is direct evidence - scads of it - that show the crime scene full of DNA of a fellow she worked with, the prosecutor is intent on taking circumstantial evidence to also accuse the young woman named Lily. Is punishing the young American woman an unconscious punishment of his strange young wife or is he just doing his job? The reader will wonder.

The author also lets us walk in the shoes of one of the accused's parents, and we see the life of her boyfriend - clinically depressed over the death of his parents some years before. We meet her younger sister as well, and between them all, there is a mosaic constructed of their combined perspectives of Lily the accused murderer, supposed wielder of knife. Instead of filling in the blanks with a book report here, I will say that each of the characters in the story seem to be locked in to a certain mindset by past events that were beyond their control. From the host-family whose home is the scene of the girls' murder to the younger sister who sees herself as merely an accessory - a playmate birthed for the accused Lily, nearly everyone feels that life is a bit unfair.

I really enjoy books with psychological insights and with unusual burdens that the story's characters must manage. Life is never predictable, and how you or I react to it might vary according to whatever else is going on in our own lives. I cannot imagine stabbing anyone to death, but in the eyes of a prosecutor and in the right, albeit bizarre circumstances, who knows what he or she would concoct and convince others of?

Ignore the correlative story of poor young Meredith Kercher, killed back in 2007 in Italy. It is offensive to tie fiction to her tragic death. But if you're up for reading how an oddly motivated prosecutor and some unusual circumstances line up, this character study will not disappoint.

Wishing peace and acceptance to the families of victims every where. And good reading to you all.

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure Cartwheel will be compared to the true events in the life and trial of Amanda Knox. Jennifer DuBois stated that Cartwheel is inspired by that true crime. After finishing Cartwheel I decided to familiaize myself with that news story since I'd never really followed it or watched the movies based on Amanda Knox. I wasn't constantly comparing the book to the real events which is definitely a plus. Because I was seeing this with fresh eyes so to speak, I could appreciate that Jennifer DuBois' debut novel Cartwheel means so much more.

Lily Hayes is studying abroad in Beunos Aires when she is accused of killing her housemate Katy Kellers. There's no murder weapon to suggest Lily is guilty of the crime besides cleverly placed red herrings. Red herrings such as her impassive appearance following the murder, bloodstained lips, and an irrational cartwheel done while in police holding. A few other instances are thrown in about the novel in order to sway the minds of readers one way or the other. This is essentially the point. How can we know for sure if she did it or not?

Jennifer DuBois challenges us to put aside what we want to believe and what we should believe to accept the truth that no one will ever actually know what happened that dreadful night unless we were there. What or how should a killer act? How or should an innocent person behave? Is there a diffrence? Lily is either so cold that she's able to do a cartwheel (bizarre), but not calculated enough to know that she should have asked for a lawyer once it was obvious she was under suspicion.

By way of richly drawn characters, and a plot that's ripped from the headlines, Jennifer DuBois takes readers on an exploration into the many mysteries in life including human behavior, the complexities fo truth, and what we choose to accept is real in the shades of grey. We watch each character struggle with their belief in Lily's innocence or her guilt. I was left unable to decide which side of the fence I fell on.

In ending, Cartwheel is a must-read by a promising new voice in the literary world. I challenge any reader to choose a side and then end this novel not wanting more closure. Closure which is so ambiguous to true life.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two types of crime fiction: the books that explore who did it and the books that explore why the who did it. Of the interrogative pronouns, why is forever and always the most compelling. Tell me what, tell me who, tell me when, tell me how, but I will not be satisfied until I know why. And so, I’m condemned to eternal dissatisfaction because that pesky why is often unanswerable. Think of all the minute actions you take in the course of a day: can you say why you acted in that precise way? Maybe. But can you say why with certainty?

Jennifer DuBois tries to discover the whys in the aftermath of a murder committed in the most extreme of circumstances. 21 year old American foreign exchange student Lily Hayes is accused of killing fellow (and altogether more blond and beautiful) American foreign exchange student in Buenos Aires. Why did Lily kiss her boyfriend mere hours after discovering her roommate dead? Why did Lily do a cartwheel after a grueling police interrogation? Why does Lily refuse a lawyer, why does Lily’s boyfriend remain free, why does the media analyze her Facebook like an undergrad analyzes Ulysses, why does the prosecutor believe her guilty nearly instantly?

If you are a true-crime buff and followed the Amanda Knox case, you are probably howling to the moon right now because it is these questions that we wanted answered. It’s fiction but it feels accurate. The success of a psychological novel is gauged by the empathy you are compelled to feel for the characters. As I read I could see a part of myself in every character: the naïveté of Lily, the loneliness of her boyfriend Sebastian, the no-nonsenseness of her murdered roommate Katy, the resolve of her parents, the vigilante spirit of her prosecutor. Ever since the domination of capitalism and Western individualistic ideologies, people prefer to emphasize the differences between humans rather than to discuss our similarities. But when reduced to our base materials, we are of the same atoms, the same cells, the same decision-motivating chemicals. We are of the same species and DuBois excellently captures how alike we are even in such an incredible situation.

I don’t know if we ever learn why in Cartwheel. We learn about the whys we tell ourselves and the whys we tell others, but the true ultimate why? Indefinable. And that’s why mystery novels and crime reporting are so enduring. Murder happens to people like us and murder is done by people like us, and when we recognize all of humanity’s proximity to that darkness, we must ask—we must know—why.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the author clearly states at the forward to the novel, this work of fiction is loosely inspired by the Amanda Knox story. duBoys intent was to provide a work of fiction with a character that inspires strong contradictory opinions, judgements, and interpretations. She wanted to write a novel about the fallibility of perceptions. With that in mind, this reader gives her a two thumbs up in success. In this tale, the main character is a coed from Middlebury College in Vermont who does a stint in Argentina for her Junior year abroad. She’s accused of killing her roommate in Buenos Aires. duBoys uses the main character herself, the father, the lover, the sister, and the host family as points of character reference. duBoys uses the prosecutor of this case to show how personal events can alter interpretations and judgements. The prosecutor is very skewed by his own wife and her unstable personality. The sister, Anna, was thrown in to thicken the plot. It’s a quick read and highly entertaining. My fun question is: Is Anna the sister she pretends to be?

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Review originally published on my blog, July 2014)

First up, and as you may already know, Cartwheel is a novel based on the Meredith Kercher/Amanda Knox case. The initial set-up is exactly the same as the real-life case, except the setting is Argentina, not Italy, and the Kercher character, Katy Kellers, is American, not British. The details of the murder (what is known about it, at least) and crime scene are identical. The behaviour of the characters after the murder is, if not exactly the same as the real case, then certainly the same in spirit. (The title refers to the controversial fact that the alleged murderer performed a cartwheel while in custody, an action used as 'proof' of her dismissive and unemotional attitude towards her friend's death.) The subject of the story is the Amanda Knox figure, here a student named Lily Hayes, and the narrative switches between Lily, her father Andrew, her former boyfriend Sebastien, and the prosecutor, Eduardo.

I am not predisposed to like books of this type, which fictionalise real events. I think they can easily be exploitative, and the use of such events to 'inspire' them is more often than not a cheap way to publicise the book itself. I can, therefore, understand why some readers might reject or dislike Cartwheel for these reasons; they are among the reasons I couldn't stand Emma Donoghue's Room - which Cartwheel has inevitably been compared to. It is, however, a hundred times better than that overrated trash. Simply put, Cartwheel broke my fucking heart.

Quite aside from the sensationalism of the premise, this book is an outstanding example of brilliant, careful, expert characterisation. The author's portrayal of Lily in particular is exceptional. In many ways she is not a particularly likeable person, and yet I loved her, simply because she seemed so real. Perhaps I loved her because she is so believably unlikeable, so recognisable as a certain type of young person filled with a naive, ignorant confidence that is both infuriating and endearing. For every unattractive personality trait there is a justification, an explanation, a snippet of history to illustrate her reasoning. The narrative gets under her skin so effectively that you understand her entirely, even though some of her actions are not, ultimately, described or explained. Such is the power of Lily's character that I found myself disliking Katy, even though Katy is outwardly more likeable, and even though, if these were real people, I would undoubtedly get on better with her, and wouldn't like Lily at all. The other characters, too, are beautifully drawn. Andrew's grief and doubt are laid bare - his soul-searching and hand-wringing over how Lily will survive and how the family can ever recover. Sebastien, who could so easily have been an empty love interest, or a plot device to prop up the more important characters of Lily and Katy, is fleshed out in the most interesting, unexpected way - as an irony-laden eccentric, as a person with his own sprawling, complicated backstory, as a boy whose own experience (or lack of experience) and insecurity colours his every interaction with others.

At the risk of sounding like I'm reviewing a YA romance... Sebastien's love for Lily made me want to weep. The awkwardness of it. All the things unsaid; the way we get to see inside the characters' heads and how their emotions never translate into the right words or actions - it's tragic. Lily's misunderstanding about Sebastien and Katy, and how it's never actually set right, because neither of them can articulate how they really feel or bring themselves to just talk about the situation. I think it's one of the most realistic depictions of a young relationship I've ever come across. This is all the more remarkable given that it takes place between an arrogant, shallow girl and a boy/man who is described at one point as a person 'left alone for his entire childhood in this collapsing house with nothing but Evelyn Waugh books to read', and at another, even more amusingly, as 'a post-apocalyptic butler'.

In the end, the murder is by far the least important thing in the book. The outcome remains uncertain, there is no definitive answer about exactly how Katy died, and no attempt to leave this as anything other than open-ended. Even if you have formed a strong opinion (like I did), there is no way to even guess how right, or wrong, you might be. And it doesn't matter, because the characters are the thing. In fact, I am tempted to say it's a pity duBois chose to base her plot on a real crime: the controversial setup may have drawn more attention to the book, but in some ways it works to obscure the beauty of this character-driven novel, an accomplishment a writer of such talent could surely have managed without the need for such a device. It also means the book is generally bracketed as crime fiction, when it actually has little in common with any typical crime novel.

The more I think about this book the more I like it. It's such a great character study. If you don't find the idea offputting, then it is absolutely, definitely recommended.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year when I read A Partial History of Lost Causes, I was convinced that Jennifer DuBois was a writer to watch. After turning the last page of Cartwheel, I am sure of it. This is an exceptional novel: poised, confident, filled with strong prose and fully fleshed-out characters.

There’s no getting around the fact that the book is inspired by the highly publicized Amanda Knox case. Instead of Italy, the setting is Buenos Aires. But Lily Hayes, like Amanda, is studying abroad when her roommate, Katy, is found murdered. Again, like Amanda, her emotional affect is “off”; put another way, she’s “not likeable.” In fact she performs a cartwheel while waiting for interrogation (Amanda Knox performed splits), which doesn’t prove that she’s guilty but DOES indicate that she’s “not sad.”

This novel, though, is not a “did she do it?” book, nor is it a nod to sensationalism. Rather, it explores the prisons of our own making…and how perceptions can sometimes create reality. Each major character is confined in his or her own prison-of-choice (Lily’s parents are suffering from the death of a child that preceded Lily in the birth order, Sebastien – her boyfriend – is fossilized in a mansion where he hides from the world, and the beautifully-portrayed prosecutor, Eduardo, has imprisoned himself within his rules.) Only Lily appears to be “free” (or is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?) as she drinks in the sights and sounds and experiences of Argentina, waiting for life to explode around her.

Lily and her prosecutor, Eduardo, are philosophical opposites. Lily, as described by her younger sister, “thinks the whole world revolves around the gaping vacuum of her needs.” Lacking in authentic emotions and believing her needs are “the vortex of reality”, she is not a sympathetic character, yet she bursts forth with life. Her philosophy: “Someday we’ll all be dead, but we’re not dead yet. And something is finally happening.”

Eduardo, on the other hand, is a highly principled man who trusts the rules and his instincts to a fault. He believes: “We must act as though our understanding, as limited as it might be, is the most panoramic and complete understanding possible. We must act as though everything in this life counts; as though we have only one shot to get things right. We must act as though nobody would see the truth if we did not see the truth.”

The reader, unwittingly, will become a major player in the equation. Your reactions to Lily and Eduardo – your belief or disbelief in her innocence or guilt – will say a lot about your own view of the universe. As a character-focused reader, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s a true page-turner that will make you drop everything until you finish it.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had quite a while to consider my rating on this book and why so much of it just did not gel with me. I never paid much in depth attention to the Amanda Knox story, so my knowledge of said story is just bare bones. So while this is being compared to that case or said to be the trigger for this novel, I have no way of knowing. What I know is that there were two women, college exchange students and one somewhat hunky neighbor, having relationships with both and than of course there is the murder of one of the girls and the other is said to have been the perpetrator.

So basically yes, this book does follow those lines, but where it deviated from the story I cannot comment. The writing in this book is very good, but something bugged me about it, not the story itself but the way it is written. I never really engaged with the characters or the story, never became emotionally vested in the outcome. Felt like it was just a story I was reading, or a recitation of facts without depth and only scratching the surface.

Anyway had a very hard time rating this, because on one hand the writing was very good and on the other, the style of the story just did not work.
Others may not have the same difficulty, it is certainly of popular interest and not all readers have the same reaction.

[Nicole~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartwheel
It ...was...a...split!

The story of Amanda Knox reminds me vividly of Joe McGinniss' true crime bestseller Fatal Vision, the 1970 case of Jeff MacDonald- ex -Green Beret surgeon accused of killing his family in "Manson-style" at his Fort Bragg military based home (it was suggested that MacDonald murdered in a drug-induced fit of rage; he is still serving concurrent life sentences).
Similarly, it recalls to mind, Truman Capote's true crime classic In Cold Blood - the gruesome Kansas killings in 1959 of a farmer and his family (the accused Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were both executed in 1965).

Cartwheel is fiction unlike In Cold Blood and Fatal Vision which are true investigational journalistic works. And it is not about Amanda Knox- this is clearly stated in the author's opening disclaimer page. Smart move, because at present, the only evidence related to this murder (since the reading public isn't privy to actual court transcripts) would be gleaned from media headlines (which,at the very least, can be inaccurately informative). It is a work of fiction loosely based on the highly sensational murder of exchange student Amanda Knox's roommate, Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy; a case that is still being played out in Italian court.

The protagonist is twenty one year old Lily Hayes who comes from an upper middle class home of divorced parents, the second child in a family of three girls (the first having died extremely young), and who has led up to this point, a sheltered, overprotected, somewhat stifled life. Looking forward to new opportunities as an exchange student in a foreign country, Lily has the feeling of freedom at last, away from parents for the first time.

In Cartwheel, duBois used a clever piece of strategy by placing the murder in an alternate setting such as Buenos Aires, where the language barrier could still be a major issue, where seemingly benign behaviors of an alien culture could still be misconstrued, or the societal norms of a foreign land might similarly render the treatment of genders with a degree of uneven ambivalence . I even detected a slight allusion to the Spanish Inquisition during the interrogation process. The whole premise of the novel is based on judgment of the accused relative to one's perception versus factual hard evidence.

Through the narrative from several points of view- Andrew- Lily's father; Eduardo Campos - the representative for the investigative magistrate; Sebastien LeComte- the boyfriend; and Lily herself - an insightful psychological profile is built of a naïve girl, suffering low self esteem and self awareness ; a young adult newly forming her own sense of identity, experimenting with new social outlets, who is probably not the best judge of character or who is not mature enough to make the best choices. The foundation of her relationship with Katy, her roommate, has undertones of disdain and jealousy, possibly from her (Lily's) own lack of self confidence. She has an affair with the reclusive Sebastien LeComte (such a pretentious name), neighbor to the Carrizo's- the hosting family with whom Hayes is boarding. LeComte does seem pretentious - a strange character with a manner of speech that implies secrecy, a "postapocalyptic butler" (according to Lily's father) living secluded in a crumpling old mansion that looks like it's stuck in a medieval time warp.

Lily is seen as aloof and unemotional, even arrogant when in interrogation, she complains that "the conversation is getting boring." To the media, her demeanor at the crime scene appears disconnected, uninvolved when she's pictured snuggling with Sebastien. She baffles everyone soon after the murder, when she does a cartwheel in the interrogation room, suggesting to investigators that she is cold hearted.

One must not compare..but ~

DuBois insists this story is not about Amanda Knox, but she cleverly injected her fictionalized version of Amanda with something that all of us, who watched the real deal play out on screen, would not have ordinarily fathomed. She was able to humanize the media-generated version of Knox by showing such human frailties and flaws in Lily- the unassuredness and vulnerability which, from the beginning, the easily-swayed Lily had been trying to overcome. By showing an unworldly side of Lily Hayes, duBois has presented a softened, alternate, possible view of the real person we've seen in the media.

The novel's progression keenly spun like a cartwheel in a gymnastics act, with many variable posits to consider. My own judgment is a hands-down split decision.

[Isidora · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book that could have been a great book. I was not familiar with Amanda Knox case, which should be the perfect starting point. However, the pretentious writing, strangely driven plot and characters I could not connect to ruined it for me. At the end I didn't even care to find out whether Lily did it or not.

[eb · Rating 5 out of 5]

About halfway through the first chapter of CARTWHEEL, I said, "Oh my God," out loud. It's just so good, so exciting, so literary, so incredibly fun to read. It tells a fictionalized version of the Amanda Knox story from the point of view of several key players, including the boyfriend, the Amanda character, and the Amanda's-dad character. The writing is sickeningly good, and somehow, even though you know exactly how the story will unfold if you pay passing attention to the news, it's riveting.

[Jenbebookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok so this was a surprise in every way.

First of all, I threw this in the pile totally at random. I have well over 500 books on my TBR shelves, and that's just counting the books I really want to read. There are the books I still want to read but will undoubtedly never get around to, the books I REALLY really want to read that are high on my list (about 200+) and then that leaves around 300 or so that I also want to read, just slightly less so than the ones at the top of my list, which makes it fairly likely that it might slip by unread, at least for a long while if not forever. And that's what this was, a book in the middle of a list of hundreds, so when you're #396 and we're talking books and you can read a book or two or three at the most a week...#396 seems so unreachable. But every now and then something inspires me to pick one of these middle numbers up, and that's what I did here, entirely at random. I didn't even know it was about the Amanda Knox thing, and even if I had, I hardly knew anything about Amanda Knox anyway so I had no predispositions. And turns out...I was so very and pleasantly surprised!

So I went and watched the Amanda Knox documentary right away with my boy-friend, who's obsessed with documentaries. So I right off the bat had Amanda in my head as Lily. Maybe not the best move, but it's what I did. First and foremost, this is a fictionalized account of the Knox thing. I think technically one couldn't even say that much, something like "loosely based on the Amanda Knox story" would be more appropriate. The title "Cartwheel" comes from the cartwheel that Lily, the main character does at the police station after being interrogated after she has found her roommate dead, throat slit. A cartwheel that Amanda Knox was widely believed to have also done, but that later turned out to be untrue. And as Jennifer Dubois says herself... "In the real universe is a girl who never did a cartwheel. This novel is a story of a girl who did. " So she makes it abundantly clear that this is NOT real, it's fiction, tho inspired by Amanda Knox's story.

Even so. I watched the documentary, and googled, and all that nosy goodness, so I knew enough to know that the stories were very very similar. And once I watched the documentary and really got to see her for myself, I knew exactly what Dubois was trying to capture in Lily. It was this offness. In my opinion, Amanda Knox is a sociopath who is emulating what she thinks is appropriate behavior, but she doesn't do it quite right and so any normal person with intuition can sense the strangeness, the feeling of something just being not quite right. She's saying the right things. But it doesn't sit well. It's like trying to cover up the smell of shit with febreeze. It might smell like roses or daisies or whatnot for a split second but at the same time you can smell the shit just a sniff and half's layers underneath. Your nose can recognize through the sweet smell that there's shit that's being covered up. Same goes for Amanda. I hear what she's saying and she sounds innocent, might even typically be inclined to look innocent, but when her person comes shining thru her eyes, you can just feel that something is WRONG. Something is askew. Something doesn't match. I didn't buy what she was trying to sell.

But that's really beside the point. Here I am reviewing Amanda Knox's creepy ass. And this isn't even about her! Supposedly. But what I'm saying is that after watching Amanda Knox and seeing how creepy she was, and feeling that strange feeling. It was definitely a lacking, she was lacking something, tho it was hard to say what exactly, and I think Jennifer Dubois makes an attempt at capturing that essence in her character Lily, and then explaining why it might be so, or how it might be so, and she does a great job.

I always hear people refer to a book as kaleidoscopic, and more often then not I'm like, huh? But this is an instance where that description works perfectly. The story is told from alternating perspectives, always a third person narrative but switching off between following Lily's parents, the prosecutor Eduardo, Lily's boyfriend Sebastian, and Lily herself, but it's not chronologically straight forward, things jump back and forth from before the crime to after the crime. It opens with a bang, which I liked, because I can seriously lag with books that are slow openers, and it starts with Lily's parents, Maureen and Andrew, dealing with a recent phonecall received from an Argentinian prison, where Lily has been studying abroad, informing them that Lily has been arrested for the suspected murder of her roommate and is being held and questioned. They quickly jump to action, making plans of action, calling lawyers, etc. And so it begins, fast paced from the very beginning. The story unfolds, as we get bits and pieces of the story from Lily in present time, we also get bits and pieces of the backstory, revealing morsels of history of Lily's character and personality, as well as little nuggets of time that begin from the day Lily arrives in Argentina up until the night of the crime. The assumption, when we are with Lily's parents, is that she's innocent, and even when we are following Lily's storyline, her innocence seems understood, or at least easy to believe in being that there doesn't seem to be anything intentionally mean spirited or violent that is prevalent in her behavior. She's portrayed as no more or different than any other normal college girl who would be studying abroad; maybe a bit spoiled, naturally entitled, narrow minded in her belief of her open mindedness, and very very self absorbed. If she has a fatal flaw it's that, her inability to see beyond herself and see how her behavior might be perceived by other people. Her unwavering belief in the strength of her own goodwill, the natural but naive belief that her good intentions and lack of bad intentions will always be enough. But then we also have the chapters with Eduardo, the prosecutor, and when we're following his storyline, Lily's guilt is assumed. Everything about the way he views Lily screams guilt, and convincingly so! So it's difficult for the reader to make up one's mind when alternating chapters provide alternating viewpoints.

In the end, the actual event is skipped over. We follow Lily up until the moment of the incident, and we've been with both Eduardo and her parents from the moment after, but the actual moments of the crime remain a mystery, just as they do in real life. Dubois never clarifies those moments for us, & instead leaves us to decide what we believe, showing us only the massive part perception can play in any event, and letting us ponder that on our own and decide for ourselves what we believe.

As annoyed as I was by having no real answer or closure to the story, I thought it was a perfect ending. I know the Amanda Knox story is also left as something that will always be unknowable, but I wouldn't have minded some closure in this story. But even so, I thought the lack thereof was fitting, it's the truth of it, we get the same lack of closure in reality too, never really knowing the truth of what actually happened, having only our own perception of things. I think that was the point of the whole story, why Dubois wrote it the way she did, from the viewpoints of opposing characters, to show us exactly that, to point out the weight of ones perception. And she did so amazingly well, everything about the book was executed perfectly to make that point.

The one other thing I have to comment on is her writing. It was amazing. Seamless, beautiful...just perfect. She has this talent for so perfectly articulating a feeling, she puts into words something you didn't know you've felt until you hear her say it and you realize that you know exactly what she's talking about. Fleeting flashes of feelings (alliteration much? Lol) that she describes so perfectly that it's immediately recognizable, and it's just stunning that she is able to so accurately express feelings that every person will recognize when they hear it, but that had never been considered or verbalized until the very second you read the words. It's great.

Not that Andrew had ever given up working through the hierarchies of pain, teasing out the taxonomies of grief; he scorned people who were untouched by death, and he loathed people who shared experiences about their dying parents when he spoke of Janie. (Who cares? He wanted to shout. This is the way of things!) The only people he truly respected were the ones whose pain was objectively, empirically, worse than his. There was a man in Connecticut for example, who'd lost his entire family-wife and two daughters-in a home invasion. They were raped and set on fire. Andrew felt sorry for this man."

Isn't that something we all do? Outwardly sympathize with people, but inwardly think, "you shouldn't be complaining...what I went thru with my children/husband/parents/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc is sooo much worse? Probably not all of us do this, but some of us do, and I'm one of them! I wish I was kinder, and could understand that each person is the center of their own universe, and not trivialize any one person's pain but it's a little hard to hear about how so and so's mother is such an annoyance to your life, when you're own mother has Alzheimer's, or how so and so's boyfriend is so mean he never wants to go to chick flicks when you've just had to leave the love of your life, or, in Andrew's case, any of this irrelevant bullshit, when his baby girl had died painfully and slowly.

There was no other family, there were no other children. There was only Janie and Maureen and Andrew, at sea on a little boat, and all the continents of the world submerged.

A few other random bits that I underlined, simply because I liked them. They stood out for me:

She was still shaky from the conversations blunt smash of adrenaline-so much like the brief narcotizing energy that comes, when you're hurt, just fractionally earlier than the pain."

Most of all, maybe, Anna was a grown-up, and sometimes Lily wished she weren't. But there was nothing to be done about it: Anna simply wasn't the same little girl who'd helped Lily try to contact Janie's ghost on a Ouija Board-a plan endlessly discussed and then, finally, one summer night, thick with humidity and black magic, attempted-and who had, when the indicator began to move, wet her pants.

Across the yard, Sebastien's house grew larger and larger, and then it was upon her. Lily stood for a moment on the porch, feeling, over her sadness, that strange flutter of excitement that often came to her in darker moments. It was a sense of detached curiosity and potential energy;; a feeling that here before her was an important event that she might witness, an important mystery she might solve, an important challenge she might rise to meet. The sensation had been with Lily from the first missteps of her childhood-she remembered it from the time she killed the banana slug, and the time she'd accidentally made Maureen cry over Janie-but it had more sinister incarnations, too. It had been with Lily the time Anna had broken her ankle doing gymnastics in the living room; it had been there when she sat in her sixth grade classroom and listened to the teacher try to explain what had just happened to the buildings in New York City.

That one, for me, was an exact. A naming of something I'd always felt but never stopped to consider what it was. ESPECIALLY when she references the experience of sitting in a classroom the day of 9/11, watching the tv's in every class, feeling sad and scared, but underneath it, unwanted, some undercurrent of excitement. Dubois hit it on the nose.

"It's funny," said Maria, "that people talk to God so much, when He's the one person who you shouldn't have to explain anything to."
"Mmm," said Eduardo. He was trying very hard to not argue. It was atheists, he often thought, who were the true fundamentalists-forever trapped within their own limited circuit, utterly without humility, smug in the laughable confidence that the universe was somehow somehow specifically set up for human understanding, like an algebra problem designed to be challenging but reasonable for a particular age group. How did that idea not undercut its own argument, while being hopelessly unimaginative and narcissistic at the same time?

I just loved her writing. It wasn't the fanciest, wasn't the purplest, wasn't even the most beautiful, but it was accurate and just right. I was really really surprised with this one. 4 stars, but only because 5 stars is reserved for the loves of my life, real true book love, and as great as I thought this was it didn't steal my heart away, in that manner.

We ended with a conviction, her own sister having "accidentally" given too much away, in an effort to help, or maybe in an effort to be grown up, I wasn't totally sure...though she was always the more rational and less fanciful of the two sisters, this action of hers, to feel that despite being told to not by her father and mother, she knew best and could handle herself without any help, against the advice of all her elders, was oddly resemblant of Lily. Just a part of youth, I guess, that entitlement and self assurance that only life itself can break. We know that the Amanda Knox conviction was later overturned, but in this story, it ends with Lily's having been convicted..

She would become obsessed with cigarettes, with her minor grievances and feuds. Maureen and Andrew would keep coming, though less and less, and then they would die, one after another. Anna would keep coming, twice a year at least; she would work for two years as an i-banker (there was no way that girl wasn't heading for an MBA, classics major or no) until she married another i-banker and they would produce two long limbed children back to back. She would never give up distance running, and she would never give up sending Lily the necessities-even as the necessities changed, year to year, even as there were less and less of them.

It would not matter. None of it would matter. Lily's spirit would not be able to stop its own decay any more than her body would one day."

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether you had passing interest in the Amanda Knox case, completely avoided any mention of it in the press, or devoured every detail, it won't matter, because Cartwheel is fantastic from any perspective. It may appear that DuBois was trying to do something gimmicky and catchy by basing her story on such a controversial real-life case, but instead the background fades away and the book stands completely on its own - its inspiration merely makes it even more intriguing.

At its heart, it shows us how easily actions and intentions can be misconstrued; how easily the innocent can appear guilty; and that ultimately, every story has two, three, four sides. This is done through several separate narratives: Lily Hayes (our Amanda Knox stand-in) in the time leading up to the crime, Lily's father and the prosecutor in the time following the crime, and Lily's somewhat boyfriend Sebastien LeCompte (who is infinitely more fascinating than the dull-looking Raffaele Sollecito).

DuBois never quite picks a side - there are no definitive conclusions here. Things are hinted at and never quite explained, and others are the exact opposite of what they seem - several pieces of evidence that clinch Lily's involvement with the murder in the mind of the prosecutor are subsequently shown in one of Lily's flashbacks to be something completely innocent. But there is still enough material for a healthy debate regarding Lily's involvement and her guilt.

This story is all the more eerie because I completely identified with some of Lily's actions and motivations, and I don't think that would be uncommon for other readers of this novel. Although there are certainly some strange quirks in her personality and her reactions are not necessarily conventional for someone entangled in such a situation, most of them are perfectly justified by her internal monologue. She is, at heart, naive and stubborn - basically, any teenage girl.

Overall, this could best be described as a literary page-turner - and what could be better? The characters are richly developed, the writing is near-perfect, and the "who"s and "why"s are enthralling.

I read DuBois' A Partial History of Lost Causes earlier this year, and while I was impressed with it on a technical level, I never completely connected emotionally with the story. But with this, she has moved up the ranks to one of my must-read authors - in a year, I'm sure to be found Googling her name with the keywords "third novel" to ensure I miss no mention of upcoming books. I must have a soft spot for fictionalized versions of real stories - Cartwheel has joined American Wife as a favourite on my shelves, likely to be read again and again in future years.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was REALLY not impressed with this novel. It was one of those books that I had to force myself to finish. I think perhaps it was a book that I needed to read in 5 years instead of now. The Amanda Knox situation may just be too close for me to appreciate a fictionalized account of a very similar situation. I found the novel to be actively annoying and frustrating. And repetitive since it basically is the Amanda Knox story with small tweaks to the details. Although it was well written, I just don't see the value in this novel at this point. It was rather disappointing for me.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished this book several days ago and have been trying to figure out what to say about it. I try to live in a little bit of a bubble, I don't watch much TV, very rarely do I watch the news, so I actually hadn't heard about the Amanda Knox story. When I chose this book I knew it was based on Amanda's experience. Reading along I didn't have any idea how much of Jennifer Dubois's supposedly fictionalized story was in alignment with what actually happened to Amanda Knox.

I thought the writing in `Cartwheel' was very detailed and realistic, with insightful examination of the relationships between the characters. I liked the characters the author created and the way the she left the events surrounding the murder vague and ambiguous enough for the reader to believe in either the guilt or the innocence of the main character.

The pacing was good with just a little bit of a lull in the middle where the author revisits certain events from the boyfriend's perspective. The story as a whole was suspenseful, the characters sympathetic (all of those poor parents) and since I didn't know the outcome of the trial I was invested enough to keep reading. I really liked the back story Dubois gave the boyfriend and the way his character is revealed over the course of the story. I also liked the portrayal of the prosecuting attorney.

I can see how some might think the author's word choices a bit pretentious, I made a vocab list as I was reading. Here are some of the words from my list: jejune, syllogism, semaphore, ungulate, milquetoast, bloviating, mirabile dictu, sybaritic, decretory, mordancy, obdurate, atavistic, quotidian, elided, pentimento, phloem, ignots, scherzo, auricle, caesura. Look them up or roll over them either way they didn't have a negative impact on my reading experience.

After I finished the book I did a Google search and read about the Amanda Knox case and found out the events in 'Cartwheel' are so close to the events in the Amanda Knox that they are nearly indistinguishable. The setting was changed, the names were changed, the split that Amanda was reported to have done was changed to a cartwheel but the events of the crime and the way the story played out was very much the same. Which left me confused.

I don't understand why the author would choose to write a story that was so closely aligned to actual events that happened so recently and were so widely publicized. I just don't know why you would waste all of your hard work and energy writing a book that's story is already known to so much of the world. Why not focus your talents on something original? Had Jennifer Dubois written an original story line I would have given the book another star.

[Nicole D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One might think that this story could write itself. After all, the story of Amanda Knox is laid out on the internet in extensive detail. But this isn't the story of Amanda Knox, it's the story of Lily Hayes, and it's exquisitely and carefully written.

I didn't really know anything about this book when I selected to review it, and I didn't know anything about Amanda Knox. I had some vague Jodi Arias recollection of hearing her name before. But after reading this story, I know a lot more about her - curious about which parts of this book are completely fictional and which were inspired by actual events (the cartwheel!), I did a fair amount of research. Both stories are fascinating.

This book subtly alternates points of view, and I think that is one of the most interesting aspects of it. Brilliantly done. Everybody's perceptions of Lily are just a bit different that Lily's perception of Lily. She's not all that likable, and yet you root for her. In fact, many of the characters in this book aren't all that likable. What they are is honest. duBois REALLY captured the voice of this generation. I admired that so much, because if you are not "of" the generation, it's a far more challenging thing to do.

The writing is amazing, and some of the observations in this book were so (I'm running out of adjectives!) insightful. The book is fast-paced, and enthralling.

This is an absolute favorite of the year, and a must read!

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cartwheel is a 2013 Random House publication, written by Jennifer duBois.

Andrew and Maureen lost their first child, Janie to anemia. Now divorced, the couple face another horror involving one of their children. Lily had traveled to Buenos Aires as a college exchange student. After only a month and a half, she is sitting in a jail accused of murdering her roommate, Katy.

As Andrew travels to Buenos Aires with his youngest daughter, Anna, he faces his feelings about Anna, his marriage, his current situation, and his failings as a husband and father.

Asking himself how he would feel if Lily was indeed responsible for her roommate's death he thinks:
"Probably, he would still love her. This was the elasticity and permanence of parental love; everything vile about your children was to some degree something vile about yourself, and disowning your child for their failings cold only compound your own."

Anna, also struggles with her feelings about her sister. She feels she was conceived for Lily's sake alone. She sees her sister in a way that her parents can't or won't.
She is also a bit bitter about her childhood and living in the shadow of Janie.

Lily's oddball boyfriend, Sabastien, is a wealthy young man that lives alone in a crumbling mansion. This home is located right across from the house where Lily and Katy are staying.
A romance starts between the two, but is mired in doubt, jealousy, misunderstandings and a little boredom on Lily's part.

The lawyer for the prosecution is also examined. His personal life is up in the air as he deals with the whims of his wife who can't decide if she wants to be married or not.
He has a more open mind about Lily than he wants to admit, but he believes her guilty or at least convinces himself he does, so he can do his job.

The author makes no bones about the book being inspired by the real life Amanda Knox case. But, this a fictional account of that case, and doesn't dwell on the guilt or innocence of Lily so much as it is a study of a family in crisis.
Lily's character is hard to read. Her parents use the phrase, "high spirited" when describing Lily's personality. Her parents had the wind knocked out of them with the loss of their first child and never got past it. Perhaps we can see both sides to this situation. The children couldn't possibly understand the extreme emotions their parents experienced by losing a child. By far this is the worst thing a person could experience. The mistakes they made are forgivable, I think. They were not perfect by any means, but who is? But, both girls held resentments toward their parents and toward Janie.
Now the family is reunited in a foreign country, watching their daughter become only a shell of the person she once was. They have no idea what to say or how to feel. Anna once more feels a sort of resentment toward her sibling. While she does what needs doing, she is maybe the only one that has a different, more realistic perspective of the situation, but her own issues could be clouding her judgment.
Although each member of the family loves Lily, each is tormented by doubt, by her bland acceptance of the situation, by this strange boy she was dating, who is not charged with anything, by their past failures, and by an uncertain future.
These characters were portrayed beautifully. I know that taking a case we are familiar with and fictionalizing it should make drawing the characters a bit easier, but I think it would really be more of a challenge.
The inner thoughts of Andrew and Eduardo, and the smart ass Sabastien , who is constantly trying to impress with his evasiveness and attempts at wry humor, the little miss goodie two shoes, Katy, the odd couple that houses the girls, the weird people Lily works with, and the rather circumstantial evidence that connects Lily to the murder all blends perfectly to create a complex drama.
The story is very atmospheric in the back drop of this city and the dark gloomy mansion across the street, and the strange couple the girls stay with gives one a weird feeling. I was drawn into this lurid tale from the very first. I could not stop reading it!
This is mystery, thriller, drama, and literature all rolled into one. I highly recommend this novel! I would like to thank the publisher and Netgally for the opportunity to read and review this novel. A++

[Snotchocheez · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I lay here idly in the hospital, having just read Ms. Dubois' latest novel Cartwheel, the word viscous keeps coming to mind (for a few reasons): the immediacy of my situation that put me here (the viscous blood clots in my leg, and pulmonary embolism), the blood flowing out of "Katy Kellers" (Ms. Dubois' victim in Cartwheel), and Ms. Dubois' skilled storytelling (at times beautiful, but sticky; run-on sentences and thoughtful, sometimes overly-wrought ideas abound, adhere to the reader's attention, and {depending on the reader's receptivity} won't let go.). (Receptivitity is key: a fellow Goodreader whose reviews I follow, filed Ms. Dubois' A Partial History of Lost Causes, and Ms Dubois' Fellow Stanford Creative Writing program alums' books {Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Winner The Orphan Master's Son AND Anthony Marra's amazing A Constellation of Vital Phenomena} in her "Pretentious Shit" file. I obviously don't agree with that sentiment, but I do understand that Ms. Dubois' writing, and others' of her oeuvre, may stick in the craws of some readers).

Particularly risky is Ms. Dubois' decision to take her viscous writing style and fictionalize a real-life sordid (and well-publicized) murder in Italy, the murder of Amanda Knox' roommate. I can totally imagine why this book hasn't been well received by many Goodreaders: this lacks the immediate punch of most True Crime books. Ms. Dubois' tale (set in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina) micro-examines "Lily Hayes" (Amanda Knox' stand-in) as well as the principals in the story so thoroughly, it's exhausting, sticky (yet quietly contemplative and haunting) reading. I know very little about the real Amanda Knox (whose own verdict in her retrial is soon to be handed down in absentia in Italy) but not only has Cartwheel whetted my interest in that story, it also has me thinking of myriad other machinations of the human psyche as I sit here in bed, pondering my existence (and my role) in humankind.

Pardon the daze-y, meandering review. I liked it (despite its flaws); if you're like-minded (or find yourself in the hospital looking for something rather viscous to read), you might like it, too.

[Imi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something about this seemed off to me and it never really clicked. I'm not sure if it's the characters and the fact that I never really engaged with them, or if it was the writing style, which seemed strangely passive. The only characters I really felt I gained any understanding about were Lily and Sebastien, while the motives and characteristics of the others felt a lot more vague, which is strange considering the novel was told through multiple points of views. Lily and Sebastien are both very unlikeable, but this made sense and demonstrates how any particular 'oddness' can be perceived as suspicious in such circumstances even if there are completely innocent reasons for them. Simply, by the end of the book I didn't feel much interest in the outcome, and I'm not really sure if that's more about me than the book.

[Sanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zanimljiv triler, koji je imao dosta potencijala, prema mom mišljenju, ali koji nije ispuniti moja očekivanja. Radnja se odvija sporo, ali nam to omogućava da sagledamo neke stvari iz više perspektiva i da shvatimo da nije sve onako kako nam se čini na prvi pogled. Ali kraj mi je pravo razočarenje. Mnoge stvari nisu razjašnjene, a isto tako nisu neke stvari prikazane iz drugih perspektiva, a što smatram jako bitnim. Poslednje stranice su naročito bezveze napisane. Ne otkriva se apsolutno ništa. Kao da je autorki dosadilo da objašnjava šta je sve trebalo i onda na kraju nešto zbrzala da bi konačno završila knjigu.
Zanimljiv podatak je to da je priča inspirisana stvarnim događajem. A čak su neki detalji preneti u knjigu, iako autorka na kraju svog romana naglašava da likovi i događaji nisu stvarni, već da je samo slučaj Amande Noks bio inspiracija za pisanje ovog romana.
U suštini, solidan je triler, barem do pred kraj. Posle je pravo razočarenje jer smo uskraćeni za mnoge informacije.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, but fatally compromised

I must be one of the few people in America not to know about the Amanda Knox case, except that she was tried for the murder of her roommate, a fellow exchange student at the University of Perugia. Which ought to have been helpful, since Jennifer Dubois writes: "Although the themes of this book were loosely inspired by the story of Amanda Knox, this is entirely a work of fiction." So I was prepared to enjoy, unfettered, a story about another American exchange student, Lily Hayes, arrested for a similar murder, only this time in Buenos Aires. I could see that the book was well written. I was looking forward to watch with interest as the facts emerged and theories unfolded, like a good detective story. And, as with a good novel, I looked forward to seeing the fictional Lily emerge as a real person in her own right. In the end, though, I was disappointed. I read with interest throughout, but felt that Dubois had not quite succeeded in balancing the detective aspects with the novelistic ones. More seriously, I felt she had been untrue to her stated intent: despite her intention of developing her imagined characters in her own way, the book kept taking turns that I felt arbitrary in terms of Lily Hayes, but which I later discovered were close parallels with Amanda Knox. The novel was a compromise between fact and fiction that ultimately did disservice to both.

Both novel and detective aspects get a strong showing in the opening chapters. The first has Lily's father, Andrew Hayes, a college professor, arrive in Buenos Aires with his younger daughter Anna; Maureen, Lily's mother, will arrive in a few days. It is a wonderful study in psychology, as they struggle to believe how the Lily they knew could ever be accused of such a thing; it also begins a journey deep into the Hayes family dynamics. All the stuff of a good novel, although Dubois also gets in a lot of necessary exposition about the alleged facts of the crime. The detective-story aspect comes to the fore in the second chapter, where we meet Eduardo Campos, the state prosecutor, meticulously sifting the evidence—though there is a strong novelistic element even here, as we realize that part of Eduardo's fascination with Lily has to do with perceived similarities to his estranged wife, María. The novel moved into a higher gear for me at this point, and I looked forward to a kind of Rashomon: different viewpoints on the central character, each seeing a different side of her, but keeping her core a mystery.

But no. Dubois tells an increasing amount of the story in flashback scenes featuring Lily herself. We learn of her excitement at coming to Buenos Aires, the flair and confidence that gets her a job as a waitress in an upscale bar, her failure to hit it off with her landlady, and her dismissive opinion of her roommate, the all-too-perfect Katy Kellers, "dullest of all possible humans, living at the precise center of all of the world's modest expectations for her, moving in confident strides toward the exact mean of her upper-middle-class life." Despite a sophomoric tendency to make such judgments, we come to like Lily, or at least to realize that she is by no means the affectless monster that she has been painted; she is very real. Dubois' point, I think, is that you can never really know anybody, and that even nice ordinary people can be capable of things you would never expect. To do this, she has to make Lily ordinary—but in making her ordinary, she takes some of the steam out of her story. If the book moved into high gear whenever Eduardo Campos was onstage, it returned to cruise-control in the increasingly long sections with Lily. And whenever we came to Lily's boyfriend Sebastien Le Compte—an effete, prodigiously rich, affected intellectual named surely after Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited, and totally unbelievable—it ground down into the lowest possible gear, if not actually into reverse.

As it went on, I found myself reading less for character than to find out what happens. But I was disappointed in that regard. Things kept turning up out of left field that made little sense in the context of the story that Dubois was telling. One detail as illustration: the DNA evidence from the crime scene includes a tiny spot on Katy's bra strap. There is no indication of how they came to look for it, or how they found it, and nothing whatsoever conclusive is made of it. So why is it there? Reading about the Amanda Knox case after closing the novel, however, I find that fingerprints (not DNA) on the victim's bra clasp were a controversial element in the evidence there. So it is clear that Dubois put it in her book too because—despite her initial disclaimer—she wanted the factual parallels between the two. Her approach mattered most to me at the end, where the outcome of the trial, and even more the events that occur after the trial, seem inorganic and arbitrary in terms of the character portrait that Dubois has been building up, fully explicable only in terms of what actually happened in the case of Amanda Knox. So which are you doing, Ms. Dubois: writing a free-standing novel, or riffing on the Knox case? You can't do both.

P.S. This is, however, far better than Katie Crouch's riff on the same case in Abroad.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Right up front I have to say that I did not like this as much as her first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes. I had signed up to discuss Cartwheel as part of an on-line book discussion so possibly I pushed myself to read it at a time not ideal for me. I felt annoyed while reading it.

I think that generally fictionalized accounts of real life events are not my favorite novels. Some are better than others but I can usually feel a certain constraint affecting authors I otherwise enjoy. Cartwheel is "loosely inspired" by the story of Amanda Knox, an exchange student in Italy accused of murdering her roommate. I knew nothing about Amanda Knox, but in this story of an exchange student in Argentina arrested for the murder of her roommate, I missed the emotional impact of Ms duBois's astounding first novel.

I suspect however that my annoyance stemmed from the pervasive influence of the tabloid press, social networking, and the current practice of police being able to subpoena the cell phone and internet data of an accused criminal. All of these factors now carry much more weight than ever before in a criminal investigation. Being confronted with this makes me want to never send another text or email, never post another blog and go off Facebook. It just creeps me out to the max.

I found myself desperate to know for sure whether or not Lily killed her roommate, but it was not made clear and I was unable to decide for myself. In fact, I could not decide much about any of the main characters.

I get it that really knowing another person is nearly impossible. I am aware that we all see other people through our own perceptions. Heck, sometimes I feel I don't really know the people closest to me. Lately I can't figure out how I feel about President Obama. I admit that Jennifer duBois made me look at these upsetting truths about life and that made me mad.

I recognized the skill by which she created this disturbing mess of human weakness and probable injustice. Yes, Lily Hayes was naive and careless, unable to see the consequences of her actions. But aren't we all like that to a degree? And how can anyone live if we must be so careful and savvy about the world to avoid ruining our lives irreparably? I was left feeling that life itself is a lost cause.

This author really got to me in both of her novels. The first time, I loved it. This time I almost hated it.

[Regina Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I know absolutely nothing about the Amanda Knox case, the author readily admits that the book is drawn from events surrounding it. Lily goes to Argenitina to study abroad and is eventually accused of murdering her roommate.

It normally takes me a bit to settle into a book, but I was gripped from the very first page. The author has a superb command of writing and the English language and developed an engaging narrative. The story is told in alternating timelines. At times you are reading about the investigation and incarceration. At times you are reading the background leading up to the crime. All of this done from different viewpoints so that you get a sense of how different conclusions can be drawn.