The The Big Girls, and wanna be bad girls of Sloatsburg Correctional
Written: Jan 01 '08 (Updated Jan 01 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: shows how much of a small world it actually could be
Cons: jumped around to much, not interesting, unnecessarily graphic
The Bottom Line: Pass on it.
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| kld718's Full Review: Susanna Moore - The Big Girls |
I cannot remember when I bought this book and where it came from but I was visiting my parents’ home over the holidays and finished my previous book. I still have some stuff at their home and I found this book tucked away with some other books that I have read. Susanna Moore is not an author that I’m familiar with but I must have thought the book sounded interesting. Boy, was I wrong.
Sloatsburg Correctional Institution, located off of the Hudson River, was built in the 19th century as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Now it house’s 500 women prisoners, is understaffed and has poor conditions for the women. Louise, one of a team of Psychiatrist’s on staff, forms a relationship with a prisoner named Helen. Helen, another main character has been imprisoned for murdering her two children. Helen is going to be locked up for the rest of her life thanks to her lawyer who thought he was doing a good job. Helen would rather have been put to death instead. She lives with the knowledge of the deaths everyday but seems to believe she was told to do it because it was for the best. She is very delusional. Her husband, a religious fanatic, supported Helen at first, but now it just using the media to get his turn on television. He also plans to divorce Helen. Meanwhile, Louise had problems of her own with her child, Ransom and his father Rafael. Rafael left them both and ran off to California (he is a set designer) and is currently shacking up with an actress named Angie. He seemed to only marry Louise because he thought she had money.
Helen seems to believe that she and Angie are sisters and writes letters to her. Angie’s lawyer writes back, telling her never to write again. But Angie decides to write her own secret letters to Helen. Captain Bradshaw, the officer in charge of the C building, begins sleeping with Louise after his wife decides to kick him out and move herself and their child to Florida. Moore weaves these characters and then intertwines their lives slowly, but it isn't until the end of the book where their lives eventually come together due to certain events.
When reading this story, one might think that you will get overwhelmed with characters because there are a few of them that tell there story. The whole book is written in first person and each person gets to tell a portion of their story very briefly and then it’s on to the next person. Then it just goes back and forth between the characters. It reads like journal entries and kind of gets annoying after a point. Moore introduces the two main characters first, Louise and Helen, and then the other characters introduce themselves along the way as they interact with the two main characters. Towards the middle of the book, it begins to get a little weird because it is sometimes hard to tell who is talking.
Louise is the newest Psychiatrist on staff and has little experience with the population, and she tends to get more involved with her patients than she actually should as a professional. Helen is the delusional character that believes a higher power told her to kill her children. Captain Bradshaw is the lonely guard that turns to Louise because she makes herself available to him. Rafael is the ex husband who thinks he is God’s gift to the world and blames Louise for everything. And Angie seems to be the one caught in the middle of the situation and is portrayed as a druggie wanna be Hollywood starlet.
Have you ever heard of that saying, “it’s a small world”? I’m sure you have even said it a few times. Moore does do a good job of bringing the characters together and showing how different lives, no matter where they actually live, could be intertwined. It is a good way to show both sides of a situation and to see how each character has a different reaction to the same situation. There is a lot of graphic talk about lesbianism, drugs, sex, and mental illness, so I wouldn’t recommend teenagers reading it. It seems to be very unnecessary to be included, although I can see why Moore did feel the need to include the prison life feeling.
Overall, I don’t believe I would recommend this book. Not only is there too much going on, the whole thing seems to be pointless. The book ends and you say to yourself, so why did I care about any of the characters and what happened to them? There was a lot going on, but despite all that, it just wasn’t interesting enough.
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4190-9
Format Read: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Price: $24.00
~ Happy reading!
Kim
Recommended:
No
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kld718
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Location: Central Florida
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