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Book Review: The Murder of Bindi Mackenzie
Aug. 4th, 2011 01:43 amThe Year of Secret Assignments has a companion novel (actually, it has a number of them) called The Murder of Bindi Mackenzie (or The Betrayal of Bindi Mackenzie, outside of the US), which I got out of the library this afternoon and churned through.
There's this weird genre switch about four fifths of the way through the book. Like, until then it's a realistic fiction book, and then suddenly there are conspiracy theories and international crime organizations? I still have whiplash.
I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories in the first place, and in this case I'm extra put out because I feel that I've been cheated out of the conclusion of the story I was reading - the naturalistic story about bright, high-strung, socially inept Bindi Mackenzie's life reeling out of control. The sudden introduction of thriller elements cuts that story off, so we don't get to see Bindi come to terms with the fact that her dad actually kind of sucks, or stumble through making friends with her classmates - we see the beginning of her friendship with them but then it's artificially sped up by, you know, the MORTAL PERIL.
That being said, the first four-fifths of the book are brilliant. Bindi herself is a brilliantly realized character: certain of her superiority to her classmates but painfully aware of her social inferiority, extremely bright, terribly lonely, and socially inept both through ignorance and through malice. You can sympathize wholly with her classmates' hatred of her, and at the same time love her yourself.
And I probably identify with Bindi more than is strictly necessary. I kept recognizing snippets of her behavior so intensely that I had to put the book down and walk away. It's not so much that I, personally, am just like Bindi; more that my friend group in high school were a sort of corporate Bindi Mackenzie, except untouched by Bindi's sense of social inferiority (as there were nine of us) and therefore less cruel, if only because we could afford to ignore everyone else.
You know, I love many of my high school friends; but I don't think that group dynamic is actually very healthy. Is it bad that it took me four years of college, five hundred miles away from all of them, to figure that out?
There's this weird genre switch about four fifths of the way through the book. Like, until then it's a realistic fiction book, and then suddenly there are conspiracy theories and international crime organizations? I still have whiplash.
I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories in the first place, and in this case I'm extra put out because I feel that I've been cheated out of the conclusion of the story I was reading - the naturalistic story about bright, high-strung, socially inept Bindi Mackenzie's life reeling out of control. The sudden introduction of thriller elements cuts that story off, so we don't get to see Bindi come to terms with the fact that her dad actually kind of sucks, or stumble through making friends with her classmates - we see the beginning of her friendship with them but then it's artificially sped up by, you know, the MORTAL PERIL.
That being said, the first four-fifths of the book are brilliant. Bindi herself is a brilliantly realized character: certain of her superiority to her classmates but painfully aware of her social inferiority, extremely bright, terribly lonely, and socially inept both through ignorance and through malice. You can sympathize wholly with her classmates' hatred of her, and at the same time love her yourself.
And I probably identify with Bindi more than is strictly necessary. I kept recognizing snippets of her behavior so intensely that I had to put the book down and walk away. It's not so much that I, personally, am just like Bindi; more that my friend group in high school were a sort of corporate Bindi Mackenzie, except untouched by Bindi's sense of social inferiority (as there were nine of us) and therefore less cruel, if only because we could afford to ignore everyone else.
You know, I love many of my high school friends; but I don't think that group dynamic is actually very healthy. Is it bad that it took me four years of college, five hundred miles away from all of them, to figure that out?
