Book Review: "Girls" by Kirsty Capes

I'm really trying to get into fiction that maybe, this time last year, I would not have picked up. This is mainly because of the requirement to expand my reading whilst also hopefully not breaking the bank. At the moment, I'm using my reading to kind of distract myself from the fact that my country is on fire (at the time of writing this review on Monday 5th August, 2024). It's a strange thing to see outside but not entirely without its predictability. But what a book I have chosen as a distraction! Girls is a strong novel about sisterhood, grief, loneliness and what you can truly do with a purpose.

Matilda (b.1986) and Nora (b.1995) are sisters and their mother, Ingrid, has just died. Ingrid was an artist who created these very questionable pieces of art that were melancholy to say the least. Matilda doesn't see Nora at the funeral and realises that her mother had asked her and her sister to destroy all of her artwork and get rid of her ashes. After an exposition which includes the way Nora almost died in a bathtub as a child, we are introduced to the result of Matilda's teen pregnancy - Beanie.

Matilda and Nora's sisterhood is frought with arguments and debates about their mother's wants and needs, but determined to carry out her one final wish, they embark upon a strange trip that will take them all the way to California.

Whilst this is about to take place, we have these side stories such as Matilda's failed relationship with the father of her child, Gus. There are Nora's attempts to kill herself and why they even happened. There are Beanie's arguments with her mother and then, there is a story about their mother and a strange mentor named Maurice. This is something the reader learns about sporadically as the latter half of the book burns on.

One thing I liked about this book is the way the story was told. At one point in the book, Matilda is in a strained relationship with her mother's biographer, Richard. Some parts of the novel are told through Richard's recordings and you really get to see the variation in the events that happened, or at least how they were recalled. Especially when it comes to mentions of people like Nora and people like Maurice, everyone seems to have an opinion on what happened regarding those characters involved in Ingrid's life.

Another thing that I liked is that Nora, though she seems completely unhinged and as if she desperately needs help, is a character that the reader can identify with because everyone else is trying to tell her story for her, even if they don't mean to. Even when it comes to Matilda because the main parts of the novel are narrated by her. Everyone who tells Nora's story whether that be the narrative or through interviews just cannot tell the story like she tells it herself. What I am talking about here is the interview content in which Nora talks about herself and talks about her mother. She is such a well-written character of great empathy that I have to commend the writer for making such a realistic human being from nothing more than someone else's words and soundbites from interviews with Richard.

The writing in this book is very immersive. There is a good balance between speech and description but there are no speech marks for speech. Yes, the writer has written entirely in reported speech and that is a very difficult thing to do. But it adds an extra layer to the narrative because now we know we may not be getting absolutely everything that happened from Matilda, instead we are getting a report of what she remembers to have happened. This means that when we get to the ending, we get Matilda's very visceral perspective and definitely feel the whole book slow right down. The report turns slightly sombre for some moments.

All in all, I think that this book was a wonderful read and that I enjoyed it a lot more than I initially thought I would. It is a novel that brings together some great themes concerning grief and truth which I think are very thoroughly explored by the text.