Before She Was Helen
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Beiträge
At one point in her past, Clemmie decided to become Helen – because it would probably save her life. When a murder happens next door, that decision severely limits and impacts Clemmie’s scope of action – and seems to threaten the prospect of a tranquil retirement. Caroline B. Cooney’s thriller has a wonderfully engaging plot and a very interesting protagonist, who does her very best to appear as boring as possible. I especially loved the idea of the thriller, choosing a retirement settlement as the setting and having characters who are all best agers. The life in Clemmie’s community as described by Cooney is exactly as I would picture it and it also offers a rather positive outlook on retired life (apart from the murder and the other shenanigans, of course). I also liked the description of Clemmie’s relationship with her relatives and the depiction of the havoc an ill-advised usage of social media can create. The other time level, that is essential to Clemmie’s development and her story, is the 1950s. I enjoyed the passages that outlined Clemmie’s past very much, especially the constricting rules for women and the outrageously unfair perspective that society endorsed when it came to rape or teenage mothers. Still, I sometimes found the 1950s parts sometimes a little tedious as Cooney continually used phrases akin to “that was different then”. That is a circumstance that we are all aware of, it would have sufficed to mention that once, but not over and over again. The merit of the historical fiction parts is to show that it was different, it is not necessary to tell the reader that repeatedly. Apart from Clemmie, who is a very likable and sufficiently mysterious character, the most impressive character is certainly Rudyard Creek, but not because he is so complex, but because he is so very diabolical. In the end, I would have liked to see an even closer connection between the two time levels and between the Rudyard plot and today’s action. Before She Was Helen is good entertainment, a thriller in an unexpected environment with an unlikely heroine, that I would recommend to all readers who like stories with multiple time levels.
Buchinformationen
Beiträge
At one point in her past, Clemmie decided to become Helen – because it would probably save her life. When a murder happens next door, that decision severely limits and impacts Clemmie’s scope of action – and seems to threaten the prospect of a tranquil retirement. Caroline B. Cooney’s thriller has a wonderfully engaging plot and a very interesting protagonist, who does her very best to appear as boring as possible. I especially loved the idea of the thriller, choosing a retirement settlement as the setting and having characters who are all best agers. The life in Clemmie’s community as described by Cooney is exactly as I would picture it and it also offers a rather positive outlook on retired life (apart from the murder and the other shenanigans, of course). I also liked the description of Clemmie’s relationship with her relatives and the depiction of the havoc an ill-advised usage of social media can create. The other time level, that is essential to Clemmie’s development and her story, is the 1950s. I enjoyed the passages that outlined Clemmie’s past very much, especially the constricting rules for women and the outrageously unfair perspective that society endorsed when it came to rape or teenage mothers. Still, I sometimes found the 1950s parts sometimes a little tedious as Cooney continually used phrases akin to “that was different then”. That is a circumstance that we are all aware of, it would have sufficed to mention that once, but not over and over again. The merit of the historical fiction parts is to show that it was different, it is not necessary to tell the reader that repeatedly. Apart from Clemmie, who is a very likable and sufficiently mysterious character, the most impressive character is certainly Rudyard Creek, but not because he is so complex, but because he is so very diabolical. In the end, I would have liked to see an even closer connection between the two time levels and between the Rudyard plot and today’s action. Before She Was Helen is good entertainment, a thriller in an unexpected environment with an unlikely heroine, that I would recommend to all readers who like stories with multiple time levels.