Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell




Eleanor & Park made me want to return to high school.







4 out of 5 stars


Review: Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois






There are two types of crime fiction: the books that explore who did it and the books that explore why the who did it. Of the interrogative pronouns, why is forever and always the most compelling. Tell me what, tell me who, tell me when, tell me how, but I will not be satisfied until I know why. And so, I’m condemned to eternal dissatisfaction because that pesky why is often unanswerable. Think of all the minute actions you take in the course of a day: can you say why you acted in that precise way? Maybe. But can you say why with certainty?

Jennifer DuBois tries to discover the whys in the aftermath of a murder committed in the most extreme of circumstances. A 21 year old American foreign exchange student Lily Hayes is accused of killing fellow (and altogether more blond and beautiful) American foreign exchange student in Buenos Aires. Why did Lily kiss her boyfriend mere hours after discovering her roommate dead? Why did Lily do a cartwheel after a grueling police interrogation? Why does Lily refuse a lawyer, why does Lily’s boyfriend remain free, why does the media analyze her Facebook like an undergrad analyzes Ulysses, why does the prosecutor believe her guilty nearly instantly?

If you are a true-crime buff and followed the Amanda Knox case, you are probably howling to the moon right now because it is these questions that we wanted answered. It’s fiction but it feels accurate. The success of a psychological novel is gauged by the empathy you are compelled to feel for the characters. As I read I could see a part of myself in every character: the naïveté of Lily, the loneliness of her boyfriend Sebastian, the no-nonsenseness of her murdered roommate Katy, the resolve of her parents, the vigilante spirit of her prosecutor. Ever since the domination of capitalism and Western individualistic ideologies, people prefer to emphasize the differences between humans rather than to discuss our similarities. But when reduced to our base materials, we are of the same atoms, the same cells, the same decision-motivating chemicals. We are of the same species and DuBois excellently captures how alike we are even in such an incredible situation.

I don’t know if we ever learn why in Cartwheel. We learn about the whys we tell ourselves and the whys we tell others, but the true ultimate why? Indefinable. And that’s why mystery novels and crime reporting are so enduring. Murder happens to people like us and murder is done by people like us, and when we recognize all of humanity’s proximity to that darkness, we must ask—we must know—why.

4 out of 5 stars