Quick Kills

by Lynn Lurie

Our first excursion was to the Bronx Zoo. The Photographer wanted to shoot me holding a python. The snakemaster wrapped the thickest, blackest one around my shoulders. An employee of the zoo offered to take a picture of the python and me with the Photographer, referring to me as the Photographer's daughter. At that moment the snake picked up its head and began to slither towards my face. I did not scream. I pleaded with the snakemaster to take the python off me. After the snake was in its tank, I washed my hands with a special soap. One wash was not enough. He let me wash as many times as I wanted. . . . There is fear in my eyes. I see the fear clearly even in the blurred snapshot. The adults waiting in line with their children must have seen it too. Fear like I have seen in my sister's eyes. Quick Kills chronicles the desperate longing to belong as well as the effect of neglect, familial absence, and the nature of secrets. The young female narrator is seduced by an older man who convinces her that she is the perfect subject for his photographs. Meanwhile, the narrator's sister embarks on an equally precarious journey. Never clearly delineating the border between art and pornography, the narrator's escalating disquiet is evidence that lines have been crossed. Lynn Lurie is an attorney with an MA in International Affairs and a MFA in writing. Quick Kills is her second novel.

135 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2014

About the author

Lynn Lurie is an attorney with an MA in international affairs and an MFA in writing. She is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador and currently volunteers as a translator and administrator on medical trips to South America that provide surgery free of charge to children. She is also a mentor at Girls Write Now in New York City.

Reviews

[Lauren Kinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of QUICK KILLS through a Goodreads Giveaway.

QUICK KILLS is deeply unsettling. Toward the beginning, I was unsure I could make it through. But the spare and well-crafted prose coaxed me along. This book reads like a beautiful film without a score.

At some point, my horror subsided and gave way to a chilly introspection. "Her eyes, like the eyes of the girl on the swing, are full of things I do not know" (100). The narrator's world is full of windows into others' worlds, also touched by isolation and fear. This is not a redemption tale, and yet the narrator's eloquence casts a glimmer of hope on all the ugliness: at least she can see it. She can fix it down like a photograph; and she can shape its obscurity, like a face left shrouded in front of her camera lens; and she can let it be destroyed like boxes of old photographs.

I wrote a song inspired by QUICK KILLS, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/m8C3VSf7kWc

[Estefania · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this short book in one sitting, mostly because there was little chance of me getting sleep after reading the things Lurie discusses shoves in your face. The story is told in pieces, not necessarily in order. I couldn't stop until I held the whole puzzle. However, Lurie holds back certain pieces. Not everything is explained by the end.

Lurie's writing captures the innocence of the girl and then her maturity in later years. This change in tone is often the only indicator of a "chapter's" place in the overall timeline. Her characterization of Father, the Photographer, and the girl herself is flawless. The other characters are not given as much importance, with the exception of Helen, whom I presume was left shrouded in mystery on purpose.

This book is unnerving in the best ways. I recommend it to anyone who dares to open their eyes.

[Max Davine · Rating 4 out of 5]

With little description beyond how the narrator interprets the world around her and almost no dialogue, Quick Kills tells a potentially shocking tale in a way that unnerves and disturbs rather than sickens. The result is that Lynn Lurie gives us an insight into the neglect, exploitation, and significant bodily harm of a young woman and girl without ever veering into exploitation herself. Such if the pitfall when depicting such themes. Inevitably, and through no fault of the author, they can be misinterpreted by minds polluted by an exploitative culture and viewed through the lens of patriarchy that fails to grasp and understand beyond views beyond their own shallow wants. With Lurie, there is no threat of that. There is no avenue for ambiguity. The few moments of explicit torture inflicted on the narrator become, like the rest of the short novel, as a series of musical movements in the form of disjointed and barely linear thoughts. Steadily darkness lurks and grows. This is a form of psychological horror that is rarely seen, if it exists anywhere else at all, and is therefore too important to miss.