thriftymommy's Full Review: Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing
My mother came over and told me I needed to start reading again and writing my reviews. I am sorry that this was the first book I picked out of her goodie bag!
About the book
I've never read any of Laura Lippman's books; this was the first (and last) for me. Every Secret Thing begins with the story of two pre-teen girls, Alice and Ronnie. They have just been tossed out of a girlfriends' birthday party after Ronnie assaults the guest of honor's mother. Wandering aimlessly, these two children wander the streets instead of going to their lower class homes in search of adventure. What they find is a baby left on the sidewalk in her carriage.
Without explanation, the baby is dead and the girls are locked away in separate mental institutions until their 18th birthday.
Not two weeks after their releases, another baby is missing and presumed dead. Into the mix is the mother of the first dead child, an African American daughter of a sitting Supreme Court judge. Add a female detective who, during her police academy training found the body of the baby and the suspects. Then, for good measure, toss in an overly involved public defender that had issues of her own to resolve and yet clung to one of the girls for her own perverse pleasure.
My review
Words are important in a supposed psychological thriller. Too bad for Lippman that she has not mastered the genre as yet; Every Secret Thing has language that is so jumbled that would make any reader discard after the first chapter. Lippman chose to write in the third person. She did not focus on the thoughts or even dialogue of one character in any one chapter. I found her to be rambling at times and her dialogue to be choppy.
Tone is something that needs to be established immediately for believability and enjoyment. Too many jumps from one tone to another made this a poor psychological reader. For example, the reader should establish the overall feel of the story by chapter three at the latest. For some reason, Lippman portrayed a bipolar personality disorder and went from low to high to manic to high (you get the point) with no clear transitional words or sentences. I'm happy here...I'm sad here...I'm very sad here...I don't know how I feel.
I just couldn't follow the storyline with the personality jumps; Lippman's characters were all over the board and I felt like asking them to get a medication evaluation...if you're confused by now, then you know how this book made me feel.
Now I know it must be challenging to create a fictional character, but if you make them up, their personalities should not change midstream. Period. For example, Ronnie, a bad girl from the first page, became a good girl by the last page. Forget that she and her friend killed a baby. Lippman about canonized the character at the end; her development overall of the main and supporting characters was poor and lacking imagination.
If your main character is a heroine, she should not get less press than the bad girls. Lippman failed to adequately build any rapport with the reader and, in my humble opinion, failed the readers with her unconvincing development. A main character should have captivating powers; she should be not only relatable but completely reliable and unchanging. Twice in her dialogue, the heroine contradicted herself...that may just be poor editing, but I found the entire story to be disappointing and just plain bad writing.
The NYTimes called this book "Powerful...Disturbing". I call this just disturbing. As a reader, I expect a certain quality of writing from the psychological thriller genre. When I buy a book it should contain, a bit of mystery, good language use, some good characters, a setting (which the book lacks entirely), and most of all, a plot. Hailed by many other authors in the genre, I wasn't sure if I was reading an unedited version or if the authors whose praise lines the first few pages had actually read this same book.
The focus of this entire book was the horrible crime the two preteen girls committed and their rehabilitation and the subsequent abduction. Lippman chose to add many different and confusing plot twists: many almost abductions that span an entire year and happen to children who look a certain way. Within these subplots, Lippman is trying to tell the reader (and her heroine) something that only she can decipher.
Without rhyme or reason, Lippman introduces and focuses on so many insignificant characters so that the main plot escapes her entirely. The driving force looses momentum and stalls completely leading to an unsatisfying climax and an almost grateful dénouement. So focused was she in her need for psychological asides that Lippman failed to remember the audience needs to be entertained!
I would only recommend this book to be added to your "Do Not Read" summer list; even if you're headed to the library, I'm sure there's a better choice than Laura Lippman "Every Secret Thing".
A terrible crime committed by two ten-year-old girls seven years ago continues to haunt everyone involved--especially now that the girls are about to ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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