Suspicious River

by Laura Kasischke

Leila Murry is young, married, and working in a motel as a receptionist - and then as a prostitute. The seemingly random abuses and perils of her adult life parallel those Leila suffered as a child, and in reliving them she is uncertain whether she will survive them this time, or indeed, if she wishes to. This "extremely powerful debut" tells a story that is at once "profoundly disturbing but also resonant with hope and rebirth" -Los Angeles Times.

Genres: Fiction, The United States Of America, Contemporary, Abuse, Adult Fiction, Adult, Drama

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 1996

About the author

Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.

Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.

Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 "disturbing, powerful, disembodied" stars !!!

2017 Gold Award (tie)(Most Favorite Read)


Most people in my life will be grateful that I finally finished this novel by Ms. Kasischke. I started this on November 23 and not since 2666 by Mr. Bolano have I been as impacted, impressed and influenced by a novel. This was published in 1997 and is this author's first novel although she had a number of poetry books published. I spoke about this to my gal friends, my boi pals, my family, my niece, my writing group and mostly of course to my partner. I, who usually only highlight three or four passages in a book made 94 highlights in a 288 page book. I dreamt this novel and had day terrors as I read. I shook in awe , shivered in pleasure and was nauseated by beauty. It inspired me to write a poem entitled "Ugly Gorgeousness" for this is what this novel was. I am torn of whether this book is feminist or anti-feminist but either way it kept poking my heart with super sharp pins that made me gasp for air. I had to put it away several times for several days as I just could not read any more as I felt I would drown in sadness, become absorbed in hatred or choke on disgust.

This book is poetry, is noir, is psychological sabotage, is horrific, is beatific, is wondrous, is repulsive, is hopeless, is violet bliss. I want to sit with the author and talk about this book for hours but how would she remember this process of writing it over twenty years ago.

In a nutshell this book is about Leila. Leila is disembodied, traumatized, alone. She yearns for love but has no idea how to access it. She uses men who use her until.... We are taken back to the dysfunction of her childhood, the barrenmess of her adolescence and the tragedy of her adulthood. Each step along the way we can barely keep our head above water. When I thought this book could not get darker a more vivid shade of black would appear.

The writing is what is most striking to me....jagged sharp poetry immersed frequently amongst prose. Images so disturbing and beautiful that I could not believe that I read what I just read and would go back and read sentences over and over again and chant them like satanic mantras.

There are way too many quotes so I decided I would just randomly pick three of my bookmarks for a flavor :

"I touched my throat. This was the different Rick again. Even his voice was lower, and I stood up a little straighter when he said it. A little surprised. A baby hand of fear and thrill with a few ragged fingernails tickled behind my ribs. The way a big storm announces itself with monotonous blue skies for day. "

"It was Indian summer again. After the day of rain, another dusty afternoon of sun in Suspicious River. A prism of it moved back and forth across my arms as I drove, and it clamped my wrist for a moment with light, then slipped up my elbow like a bangle."

"Afterwards, I curl into Rob's bony chest and fall asleep again, but dreamless this time, with wind and clouds parting their curtains around the bed in this strange dark, in the twenty-fourth October of my life. The one with the weather my mother never rose from, dank and velvet with death."

So many dark and beautiful sentences like these, dark garnets, semi precious and unforgettable.

Ms. Kasischke I bow down to your poetic genius. Thank you !!

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went to the library after work, on some saturday not long ago that already feels long ago, because I didn't want to go home. (I paid the price for what I wanted to avoid, as those things usually go. A day, not put off after all, wanted to end that has already ended. I never learn my lesson.) I knelt on the library floor, avoiding skinless knees, (from some clumsy accident that I felt way stupider about than I should've. Well, clumsiness has already been well documented in the Twilight saga so I won't go on) and my eyes found Laura Kasischke instead of Anna Kavan. Knig-o-lass of goodreads had recommended to me one of her influential favorites, Suspicious River, by Kasischke. The book fate gods had spoken, or something.

Oh yeah, and the plot description read that Leila is a hotel clerk in Michigan who moonlights (graveyard shift lights! Coming home later and later lights) as a prostitute. If anyone might, uh, want to make some extra money... Suspicious River also works as a how-to guide on hotel clerk prostitution in the state of Michigan (it is not hard nosed on the affair so much as it is hard headed. Something hard. Or headed). Google privacy being what it is you can't just search "How to be a prostitute" anymore without the pigs knocking down your door.

My three start rating is a conflicted one. I was in some place between love and frustration, at times. When Leila walks through the outlet malls and fantasizes about some other future and what it could be for her if forces in her control took hold of the part that kept her from taking control. Just working as a shop girl, maybe a little shop lifting. Money saved up towards something else. I can relate to that because I am a person who avoids things and looks forward to having something to look forward to, without even knowing what it is.

I sat in a library chair, curled up with skinless knees that stung with any of the "It's just my body" bullshit that Leila told herself in the really, really time to take control now moments. It was very The Neverending Story except I wasn't a pansy ass little boy who liked to sit in his daddy's lap. Leila is the anti mama's girl. It wouldn't have been appropriate, trust me. There were the creepy kind of guys milling around. The ones that never seem to be eyeing books. I couldn't tell what they were eyeing (eye contact, um, not a good idea). Something disturbingly unknown and very lurky. I started "casting" the men in Leila's life with these dark library men. The Texan pimp was tall and remained on the outerline of my eyeline whenever I happened to be reading about him. The men behind me were the men in Leila's past, like the preacher who used her like the toilet seat guys like that like to call girls they think Leila are like (I'm too sad to think about that now so moving on).

I felt Leila's out of body it's just my body that's not her body in the present. The past... Well, if you know that there's no such thing as that traumatic childhood story that blots out the whole rest of you like an eclipse that just won't leave... I could feel it like something in your throat that you can't swallow away when she couldn't stop herself from doing it. The bravado that even she didn't believe. The husband who wasted away his body for control over his life. I would have said it wasn't about control but more like not letting go of an idea once you had it. Or, you know, narcissism. Yeah, you can say "I do this because I am this" and I'm still going to think where it is going is more important. So Leila's mom fucked her uncle and wasn't much of anything besides that (that depressing toilet thing, again). It didn't end well. Valentine's day, venarial disease day, visitor's day in prison. Because of doesn't beat the walking in place feeling that I had had when Leila is in her shopping mall, or missing when she reaches for the missing fat on her husband in bed. There could have been a way to reach for the past but as written it was too explanation (I keep saying that! I'm doing it now. Explain schemain). It was almost women who write letters to men in prison reaching. I wished it was more like that. Like the potential of those men walking around and knowing there's a part of you that doesn't trust anyone, not even yourself.

Of course, this could just be me. I know that I have my own ways and things that touch those dawning places in me that make me feel like I know where it could be going or make connections to other things. I wish Suspicious River had been one of those and it wasn't except in moments (good moments, though). A whole review just to say that.

Leila is described as a palely pretty (or is it prettily pale?) redhead who could still pass for young. She dresses to be vulnerable. That's Leila. Dressing to be vulnerable and the stolen underwear isn't as tough or getting away with as much as she might want to say it is. I casted her too. Adrienne Shelley is one of my heroines dead or alive (r.i.p). (Especially as a writer. She could make me feel good about seeing things.) She would have had the shouldn't really be breaking and willing itself the rest of the way thing that Leila should have had. And I know that Paul Bryant said it was a bad movie (I love it) but I still could live forever on Samantha Morton's performance in Under the Skin. Everything I could realize and much better because the heart pulls, beats, bleeds and wheels (turning, clockwork and predictable like) and all on her face and body. Mama reasons and reasons don't matter 'cause that's just a trap anyway. I could have every meal ever on The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer on the self destruction alone. You have to understand it's not a secret handshake world of abuse to get the what comes next part. Why did Kasischke have to go and tell me what was happening! She's supposed to be a poet. And that's mine.

Oh, and I was disappointed. Kasischke is a poet. Her river analogies didn't do anything for me. They should have done something for me. I live for that shit! (Maybe not as much in Hopscotch or The River Ki. Okay, maybe not rivers. I was born by a river myself. And I hope I never start weaving my life history around the singing river and murdered indians).


Sorry, Knig! I don't mean to complain this much. I'm glad I read it. My knees healed (but not before I had to reach on my tippy toes for the Sorrentino).


P.s. Amazon tells me that this is a movie, after all. Molly Parker is in it. I have a somewhat irrational that is actually pretty irrational dislike of Molly Parker (rational 'cause she's no good). It's a bit like Ethan Hawke showing up in good movies to make them less good (only, unlike Hawke, she doesn't have the only good as an egotistical Tom Cruise part). So, Molly Parker means no Suspicious River movie for me. I've been avoiding The Life Before her Eyes adaptation of another of her novels even though my favorite Sarah Polley is in it (Uma Thurman is often very good, too). I heard bad things. Parker, what makes you think I'll watch you when I haven't watched one of my favorite actresses (since I was eleven, no less)? Are you insane? Stop stalking me!

[courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book did the unthinkable: it wove past and present together using incredibly descriptive and efficient language, was a really compelling page-turner, and -- AND it was a deeply emotionally affecting novel.

there are friends of mine who read the reviews i write and say "how could you read something so dark?" and i have no real answer. i am amazed that a writer can so capably manipulate my moods as this one does. laura kasischke wields a great deal of power -- meting out information as needed and whenever it delivers the most punch.

what the back of the book says is that it is a compelling study of abuse and victimization or something like that -- and it is. we meet leila murray as she begins her career as a prostitute and no matter how desperately we want her to make other choices, kasischke has made leila's fate inevitable. seriously: inevitable. and that is really, really hard to do.

[Lynette Eklund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very lyrical, but there were times when the words were lost to me. (The walls throbbed around me like kindness, like kidneys...") Huh? ("She handed me a tissue, and it smelled like wet white roses...") I've smelled a lot of roses, but I've never smelled any rose that smelled of damp tissue. Nor does white emote a specific scent to me.

In spite of the sometimes overly strong poetic tone, I couldn't make myself stop reading this book. I can't really say it was a pleasure to read, but it brought forth so many thoughts that I couldn't leave unanswered. I just HAD to finish the book!

Overall, definitely a piece literary art.

[Touloulou · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai hésité pendant ma lecture entre ennui profond et attraction malsaine... Le style de l'auteur m'insupportait au début, finalement vers la fin j'ai un peu mieux apprécié.
Mais un mois plus tard, je ne sais toujours pas quoi penser de ce roman !

[Moushine Zahr · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first novel I read from author Laura Kasischke, which I borrowed from a public library. I'm glad I didn't pay to read this book.

The author masters writing beautiful sentences, expressions, and metaphores with prose and poetry to describe the small rural city of "Suspicious River" located in Michigan state, its landscape, sceneries, people and life in general. Unfortunately, this is far from enough for me to find this book interesting.

The characters are very common and stereotypical with nothing unique or special about them. Some of the leading characters are well developed, but not other characters like "Gary". The plot is simple, read it and seen it before. You know what to expect before it comes. You enter immediately into the story, but then the story stalls for the rest of the novel.

After finishing reading this book, I still hesitate on what the author wanted to write about:

1. Did the author want to describe life and people of a small rural Michigan city like "Suspicious River"? The author did an extensive job in detailing and describing nicely the various sceneries of the city, but this is the only positive thing about the book.

2. Did the author want to make a symestric story line between the life of a young women and the life of her mother at the same age? I didn't get into the characters nor into the story, which I thought was simple and not interesting. There were redundancies of stories. There were too many motel sex scenes, which divert the attention of readers from a real story. There was lack of creativity and originality, covered by extensive descriptions and sex scenes.

3. Or was the author trying to support the idea of rights for women to freely use their body as they wants, whether it right of abortion, right of sexuality before, during, or after marriage, ...? I got this last previous idea by paying attention not to the sexual life of the young motel receptionist, but of what her husband said to her about himself "It's my body", an expression that stuck with her throughout the novel.

"slow and dull like love", which is an expression used by the young motel receptionist to describe her husband Rick. Ironically, this is exactly how I want to describe this book "slow and dull".

[Kat Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Laura Kasischke is the master of writing about truly horrible, violent situations in absolutely beautiful prose. She is a master of vivid description and always picks the perfect, unexpected detail to include. This is one of the best novels I've read by her, but it isn't for the faint of heart. The book is rife with explicit descriptions of violence against women. A mousy desk clerk at a local hotel, Leila begins prostituting herself for reasons that are at first unclear. Initially, it seems like a sudden choice, but as her backstory and long history of trauma is slowly disclosed, what seemed like a surprising "slide" into sex work is actually revealed to be an almost predetermined fate.

This book will probably frustrate people. Leila is a pretty passive narrator--which makes sense as she frequently speaks about leaving her own body, an instantly recognizable trauma response. The women in Suspicious River are wary of her because of her troubled childhood and her rumored "reputation." The men feel entitled to her body and are disgusted because they're drawn to her. Anyone who seems like they'll offer a helping hand winds up exploiting her, which is a little unbelievable, I suppose.

I will say that the novel's plot plays into a lot of different stereotypes about sex workers, but given that the book was published in 1996, I'm not going to dwell on that too much. This book doesn't seem to be interested in making a larger commentary on the morality about sex work. Instead, it's more concerned with how trauma manifests--how the past haunts us and how it can trick us into thinking we have control over our choices when we're really choosing what hurts us over and over again. It's a pretty bleak sentiment, but it's gorgeously written. And that's why I love Laura Kasischke's writing so much.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hard book to read. A painful, nauseating gut punch of a story. The prose is magnificent: lyrical body blows that intensify the plot. Repeat references to teeth (even red rose petals look like teeth), blood (ditto rose petals) and darkness. There is indescribable darkness in these pages, but Kasischke brings us into the dark with Leila. I will not read another book like this because Kasischke wrote this perfectly, and I'm not sure I'd emotionally survive another such. I picked up her second book, and it will be returned to the library unread.

There was a writing story I recall about a woman who reread her published memoir and was astonished to find she had left all the pain out of it.

Kasische leaves no pain unfelt. Stunning writing.

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

mon oncle me l'a offert à noël, et quand j'ai lu le résumé j'ai un peu haussé les sourcils ("une femme qui se prostitue ? bon... je vois pas trop le message mais on va essayer")
c'était très dur à lire, même si le style d'écriture est un petit délice et m'a vraiment plu. ça faisait un moment que je m'étais pas sentie vidée comme ça après avoir fini un livre, et j'ai pas mal pleuré (dans le métro aled).
il y a tellement de choses à dire sur le trauma affectif et sexuel, et comment en sont affectées les femmes (les filles), et comment ce trauma continue de se manifester tout au long d'une vie. sur la recherche d'amour et de volonté de vivre et sur la façon dont les femmes sont vues et traités, et se voient et se traitent.

[Katie Mcdonough · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may never get over this book. Luckily I can just read it over and over for the rest of my life. That said, it's not for everyone. The language is often more like poetry than prose. The story is heart-crushing with very few moments of levity. But the writing is magical. Some sentences made me stop dead and look around me, as if to make sure I was still on Earth. I called my best friend and read her paragraphs over the phone. I couldn't believe it when I learned that it's out of print. I want to buy up every used copy I can find and surround myself with them. If I could grab only five things to save in a fire, this book would be one of them.

[Erica]

I loved Laura Kasischke's In a Perfect World, and we're publishing her new book, The Raising, in March. Laura is a poet, and both of those books are beautifully written yet also fairly commercial. Suspicious River is different. It's about a young woman, Leila, who has started working as a prostitute at the motel where she handles the front desk. It is much more htmlgiant-esque than target-esque like her later books, and it makes me want to read the rest of them to see if this was a subtle shift or a sudden change. I liked reading it a lot.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frustration, disgust, disbelief, shock...all of these feelings surface but this story is an amazing insight to how someone simply goes along with what crosses their path, accepting and engaging in behavior that damages the soul, and for what? I never understood WHY, but the author leaves it to us to decide.

[Marina Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very troubling book, because of its subject matter and the cold way in which Leila seems to depersonalise her experiences and collude in anything bad which happens to her. All about control over one's body (from refusing to eat to allowing it to be abused). Very poetic language and descriptions, not all of which were entirely justified to be honest.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this very much when I first read it, but am coming around to thinking it might be a bit juvenile. Someone made a film of it that was pretty bad, I seem to remember. Poetic, slutty and probably just about pretentious enough.

[James Askari · Rating 2 out of 5]

There must be something wrong with editing, marketing and reading in this country for Faber to publish this debut novel, focused and creditable on its own terms, by Kasischke and not her subsequent (or even earlier) poetry collection. The degree of stylisation in a genre narrative works a little less well, stands out a bit more, than it would in lyric poetry; in this potboiler set on a 'pinkie' at the northern edge of Lake Michigan-abutting Michigan, no one reads a book, discusses politics or has any concern that would more ordinarily be available to people who had been to college.

The story is about sexual damage and how it attracts violent predation. The narrator, Leila, is a twenty-four year-old motel receptionist--a dead-end job--who supplements or rather dwarfs her earnings from her vague old female boss by servicing lonely men staying for the night. At first she seems in control. The backstory, which would at first seem introduced as an explanation of her acts (though the relative dimensions of the flashbacks and the present tense narrative sections change over the course of the book), is of her childhood: her young, beautiful mother is having an affair with her husband's more attractive younger brother. Her father, kindly and defeated, is a failed salesman, and the couple are reliant on him for money. An overheated, bad scene ends melodramatically with the brother knifing the mother to death on her bed when she is Leila's age now. The girl finds her, imagining the blood on her front is a slip. She is the object of persecutory fascination at school and is soon exploited for her vacant, desperate-to-please sexual availability.

In the present-day narrative, she drifts away from her husband, a high-school boyfriend who is remaking his body by eating nothing but salads. A man at the motel hits her; when she is impassive, 'Gary' sets himself up as her loving protector and, promptly enough, mack, passing her out to other men, including one who beats her even more scarily. Leila seems trapped in a series of compoundingly bad decisions.

Alas (I would say), the register of Kasischke's writing is poetic, bright, elementary, seen with a disturbing intensity and vortex-like grip from Leila's perspective. The problem is not so much the first figure, as the series that modify and enlarge it (the victim is not just like a glass ornament, but a cat, and one with diamond eyes; her injured father's palsied leg is not just bloodless, but the wing of a bloodless angel); these deepenings take the images away from any thought-process that might be reasoned, and away from the visual into the unfollowably imagined and posited. Their quality is uneven; and I think an editor might have challenged Kasichke to have pruned 80% of the figurative language. When I asked why the author might have written the book, it was more plausible to me that the motivation had to do with the language (with writing a poetic language without being limited to the minority art, poetry) than out of a personal obsession with the subject-matter (is Kasischke a survivor of abuse and bereavement?) or even as an exercise in stringently delimiting an emotionally potent but relatively arbitrary subject-matter.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leila arbeitet als Rezeptionistin in einem kleinen Motel. Um ihr schmales Gehalt aufzubessern, hat sie Sex mit den Gästen. Eines Tages kommt ein Gast, der mehr will als nur die schnelle Nummer bei Ankunft.

Junge Frau arbeitet in Hotel und verdient sich ein paar Extradollar, um sich etwas zu kaufen von dem sie noch nicht weiß, was es ist. Das klingt erst mal platt, ist es aber ganz und gar nicht. Denn im Gegensatz zu dem, was Leila denkt, bekommen ihre Kollegen sehr wohl mit, was sie treibt und sie wird von ihren Kunden auch weiterempfohlen. Zu meiner großen Überraschung ist sie verheiratet und auch wenn sie glaubt, dass ihr Mann nichts ahnt: auch er weiß, dass sie etwas Unrechtes tut, auch wenn er nicht genau weiß, was es ist. Aber vielleicht weiß er es doch, denn Leila ist sehr gut darin, sich etwas vorzumachen und so macht sie sich vor, dass ihr Mann eben nichts weiß.

Aber warum prostituiert sie sich? Die Antwort liegt in ihrer Kindheit und kommt eigentlich tief aus der Klischeeschublade. Ich schreibe eigentlich, denn ihre Vergangenheit enthüllt Leila erst nach und nach. Jedes Ereignis aus der Gegenwart bringt eine Erinnerung ans Licht und macht es mir immer schwerer, sie zu verurteilen.

Das buch hat mich angenehm überrascht. Ich habe zwar den Inhalt bekommen, den ich von Titel und Klappentext erwartet habe, aber die Geschichte war eine ganz andere.

[Elisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immediately sucked into the story of Leila on the first page. The story itself was intriguing, and I had a hard time putting the book down. A character study in a tragic life, with bits and details given out little by little as the reader puts the pieces together. Leila has a disturbing childhood, which morphs into her current young-adult life and I couldn't help but be drawn into the mystery of how she got to where she is now. At times, I felt sorry for Leila, but other times, I saw her strength and control.

A note about the text--It was clear to me that the author was a poet. I found myself occasionally annoyed with her exaggerated description where she uses 3-4 metaphors in a row to describe something. This happens consistently and quite often throughout the text. She has some very particularly favorite words (ex. blond) which become boring from overuse. However, it wasn't enough to keep me from enjoying the underlying story.

[Izzy readeuse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ma chronique : https://wereallmadaboutbooks.wordpres...

Dans ce premier roman prometteur, Laura Kasischke ne se dépare pas de sa plume si poétique et de cette atmosphère pesante et angoissante qui lui est chère. Roman noir, sulfureux, où aucune violente n’est épargnée, on assiste dans Suspicious River impuissant à la lente descente aux enfers de Leila dans sa quête identitaire. Elle abandonne son petit couple ordinaire mais salutaire pour se jeter à corps perdu dans les bras d’un homme dangereux et violent, qui l’aimera à mort… La cause de ce martyre, un événement traumatisant qui a marqué son enfance et la certitude qu’une malédiction inéluctable pèse sur elle. Est-elle condamnée à reproduire les mêmes erreurs que sa mère et à connaitre le même destin funeste?

[Morgan Howell · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is for ethel cain fans. i couldn’t help but hear gibson girl and fuck me eyes on repeat in my head. this is a small town story of violence and cycles of abuse and the way women are consistently taken advantage of and haunted by it their whole lives. this was so well done and so well written.

“i was that far away, barely tethered to myself by a thin, white thread, - though gary was pushing, alive, in total control taking over for me. i recognized my body as i hovered above it, but it wasn’t my body. it was just a glimpse of someone i’d known once, changed- like the pom pom girl at the gas station. i closed my eyes. afterward, i wanted to be slapped, but he just kissed my numb lips softly. it wasn’t enough. i wanted to hurt”

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Those women thought they wanted a man like that, but what they really wanted was to die.”

Laura Kasischke is my advisor for my honors creative writing thesis, and reading her first novel made me feel incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to work with such a gifted writer (as well as a kindhearted, insightful person). I expected this novel to have language as gorgeously poetic as Laura's poetry, but what I did not expect was for this book to so intricately reveal the cycles of abuse and childhood traumas, and the way it reverberates throughout adult life. This is not a book I will stop thinking about anytime soon.

[Valérie POUPAERT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Double temporalité, on suit Leila de nos jours et dans son enfance.

De nos jours on suit sa descente en enfer, son enfance nous fait comprendre pourquoi.
Parfois je voulais la secouer et lui crier "Noooon ne fais pas ça !!!!!!!" Mais en fait Leila sait très bien ce qu'elle fait et pourquoi elle le fait.

J'ai eu de la difficulté au début, je trouvais ça long, puis ensuite j'ai été happée.

Je voulais mettre 3 étoiles puis réflexion faite, vu le travail sur la psychologie du personnage principal intense et profond, j'ai mis une note de 4.

[Chloe Sintic · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a very, very broken woman who has faced a lot of trauma throughout her life while grieving the deaths of both her parents. The relationships she has with other characters are dull and emotionless. She offers sexual pleasures to men in exchange for money, yet she has not a clue what she actually plans to do with that money… There are times where I felt sympathetic for her and other times where I felt disappointed. I wasn’t a fan of her behavior toward those that did care about her, but sadly, she wasn’t fan of herself either.

[Linda Friedrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the type of novel that, while powerfully written, is so disturbing/depressing that it is hard to describe as a “good” read. For me, emotionally damaged characters who are victimized are not as enjoyable to read about as those who manage to resurrect something positive from their lives. The author also cloaks her story in imagery that is confusing and doesn’t enhance the reader’s ability to understand Leila’s emotional state.

[Fandango · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where we watch Leila walking to her doom, knowing we cannot do anything about it but still cannot stop reading.

A little bit too poetry for me at times.

"Ce que vous voulez vraiment et ce que vous avez peur qu'on vous donne."
"En fermant les yeux, l'espace d'un instant, j'ai vu un grenier plein de violents secrets aux ailes noires et mouillées"
""Te fait pas de bile pour elle", dit-il en se relevant. Mais il n'explique pas pourquoi."

[vienslirejimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila, jeune réceptionniste, offre des faveurs sexuelles aux clients contre de l’argent. Elle rencontre Gary, qui se met à la prostituer. Elle est tres marquée par son enfance violente et l’adultère de sa mère.

[Marnie Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I'm just not a fan of this author, this is the third book of hers I've tried to read and left unfinished...

[Sandy Yablonski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the book was a little depressing, I understood why the girl was doing what she was doing. It made me wonder what happened to her after the end! Really enjoyed it.

[The Reading Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glauque, glauque, glauque. Le premier roman de Laura Kasischke, bien qu'on y retrouve les thèmes récurrents de ses romans, ne préfigure pas le reste de son œuvre.

[M. Novak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, dark, evocative

[Laurie-Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5💫