“The problem with snapshots,” Kirby Mazrachi thinks, “is that they replace actual memories. You lock down the moment and it becomes all there is of it.” Kirby is one of the girls in The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland Books, 2013), a disturbingly beguiling novel that is now an Apple TV series in which Elisabeth Moss plays Kirby. Beukes' easily digestible prose and gleefully nagging narrative betray a convoluted timeline and staggering depth of research. Drifter Harper Curtis (played in the show by Jamie Bell) quantum leaps from time to time gutting the girls as he goes. The House he squats in his helper, enabling the temporal jaunts. He’s like an inverted Patrick Bateman: no money, all motive. Where Bateman’s stories are told from his point of view in the tones of torture-porn, Harper’s kills are described from the abject horror of the victims. And the victims, who are all strong-willed women with drive and purpose, are only victims at his hand. Otherwise they shine with potential and promise.
Shining Girls' Tangled Timeline of Transgression
Shining Girls' Tangled Timeline of…
Shining Girls' Tangled Timeline of Transgression
“The problem with snapshots,” Kirby Mazrachi thinks, “is that they replace actual memories. You lock down the moment and it becomes all there is of it.” Kirby is one of the girls in The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland Books, 2013), a disturbingly beguiling novel that is now an Apple TV series in which Elisabeth Moss plays Kirby. Beukes' easily digestible prose and gleefully nagging narrative betray a convoluted timeline and staggering depth of research. Drifter Harper Curtis (played in the show by Jamie Bell) quantum leaps from time to time gutting the girls as he goes. The House he squats in his helper, enabling the temporal jaunts. He’s like an inverted Patrick Bateman: no money, all motive. Where Bateman’s stories are told from his point of view in the tones of torture-porn, Harper’s kills are described from the abject horror of the victims. And the victims, who are all strong-willed women with drive and purpose, are only victims at his hand. Otherwise they shine with potential and promise.