2 Stars
Book
Rating: PG-13
Language: PG-13 (Multiple uses of
sh*t and b*tch, the only two that really stood out)
Sex: PG (The girls witness a
man doing “something rude” to himself. They witness the tigers mating. A man
exposes himself to a young girl several times over)
Violence: PG-13 (Grisly
descriptions of killing animals and blood lust as the tigers and girls tore
into carcasses. Whaling descriptions)
Drugs/Alcohol: G
I
wanted to like this book. I really did. I spent money on it even when I told
myself I couldn’t buy anymore books. It was an interesting premise and the
cover is gorgeous, how could I resist? I’m weak, okay? It just didn’t do
anything for me. It was difficult to get into, it was difficult to keep going,
in fact, it was difficult to finish. I debated putting it down and never
picking it up again at 50% through.
I
have a lot of beef with this book, but I didn’t hate it. The problem is, I
can’t decide what exactly made it redeemable. It might have been the fact that
it wasn’t afraid to talk about touchier subjects? I don’t really know; I’m just
spitballing. Maybe I just feel like being generous.
My
first issue with the book was the dialect. The dialect was ridiculous. I hated
it from the moment I started the book. The whole premise of the book was that
when this woman, Hannah, was younger she lived with tigers in the wild and lost
her language. Sure, that’s happened in other stories. Children are lost in
jungles and found again, they have to relearn the norms and language of
society. I just felt like Hannah definitely had enough years to learn how to
speak properly. She was found again when she was about ten. She wrote down her
story when she was in her seventies. Sixty years is plenty of time to relearn a
language. She was around people speaking properly for years. She was around whalers
in a city; she lived with a man, Ernie, until he died. These were all people
who could speak. My problem with this was that she was talking about not having
good grammar and language but the only bad things about her language were when
she used me instead of my and were in place of was. AND THIS WAS THROUGHOUT THE
ENTIRE BOOK. It was constant and annoying.
I
get that this story was supposed to be an honest and realistic, but there’s a
line. This book made me sick. The descriptions of the girls as they tore into their
fresh kills were sickening. I usually have a pretty strong stomach, but I was
disgusted. The girls would shove their faces into the bloody necks on the
animals and tear out their throats and then the tigers would have their turn. I
hate books and movies where all the animals die so this was a really difficult
book for me to finish, especially because of how grisly the deaths were in
nature.
On
top of the animalistic nature of the story, I wasn’t able to connect with any
of the characters. They annoyed me more than anything. Hannah’s narration was
draining and it just felt fake. I didn’t like her in the beginning when she was
normal and I didn’t like her when she was feral. I felt like she was forcing
Becky into doing the things she didn’t want to do time and time again. I didn’t
like Ernie or Mr. Carsons. Becky was alright. I just wasn’t attached to any of
them and really had no sympathy for any of them either.
Lastly,
the lack of chapters drove me nuts. I felt like I was forcing myself to get
through something I didn’t want to get through. There were no definitive breaks
in the story. I get that this is supposed to be a stream of consciousness type
of thing and I’m cool with that as long as it’s a short story. But with this, a
book that is less than two-hundred pages felt like it was twice that. It was
just not a fun read altogether.
ALSO.
It took Hannah so little time to become feral. It was like two weeks and she was
running around on all fours and tearing into the throats of animals. After the
flood that strands the girls, Hannah automatically adopts the two tigers as her
‘parents’ and doesn’t even give a second thought to the issue that she and
Becky are stranded in the jungle. The timeline for Hannah and Becky turning
feral just doesn’t make sense.
I
feel like this is such a mess of a review, but this was a mess of the book.
“The lean-to were filled with tiger skins all nailed to the
walls of hanging from the beams—all in different stages of curing, so it stank
like a swap filled with rotting animals. I think I lost most of me language
there. I mean, where are the word to explain what I saw?”
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adjö,
Lauren
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