Natalia

GRR gets 5 stars for atmosphere (steamboats on the Mississippi!) and 3 stars for the plot. It was good, especially at the beginning, but my enthusiasm fizzled out after the first encounter with the bad guys. I also liked how GRR played with the vampire myth - it was an interesting take.

This story is told by Elizabeth, a woman who was involved with a murderer (Bell) who was just released from prison. As the story unfolds, we learn about the events that got her locked away and in doing so Elizabeth reveals her obsession with Bell. She doesn't reveal the victim until the end, which kept me in suspense, but I became frustrated with her dropping hints and refusing to follow through - there's a lot of "if I had only known" and "so I thought" and "I believed her at the time" etc. I wanted to like this book, but the narrator's meandering style did not work for me. Also, she and the other characters were hard to relate to. I guess I was expecting more suspense. I'd imagine if I'd read The Wings of the Dove before this, I would have put the book down midway (there were a lot of references to it in the book and when I looked it up at the end, I found that the plots are pretty similar).

Rest assured that C Pam Zhang knows the meaning of the word longing, which she explores from multiple angles in this prescient and evocative novella. It's about desire, desperation, greed, and guilt. I went in knowing almost nothing about the plot and enjoyed it a lot.