hmmmm.

okay. so. this is a tricky one for me to rate. (i read this for an in-person book club i've just started attending.) there was much i liked and admired about this book, yet there were things that just didn't work for me. let me get the criticisms out of the way first:

i really had trouble with the flow of the book. granted, i managed to go into it not realizing it was connected short stories so i take ownership for that bit of dumb-dumbness. but setting that aside, this is what happened: in the very first story (heartbreaking) we are introduced to an empathetic nurse. in an unusually short amount of time, i got very attached to him. and then he was gone. and i wanted more from/about him and his daughter. later on in the book, he crops up in another story... but it was so in passing, he barely took root before i was missing him again. silly. i know! along with that wee issue, every chapter is a new beginning. new version of victoria. there is no subtle way to segue from one story to the next. moving from one iteration of victoria to the next was jarring. (though i recognize this could be a very desired effect, this feeling of being unnerved.) my final minor issue had to do with consistency. apart from confirmed identity, we are given very specific information about who the discovered bones were from - gender, age, geography, state of health. some of the imagined victorias were beyond these boundaries. so that was a bit of a puzzle to me (only because the author laid it out for us upfront. if the information garnered from the bones has been less vague, i likely would not even be thinking about this point.)

so that's my petty niggling.

on the upside - and there is more than one:

leroux is a lovely writer, and i enjoyed the translation. despite the difficulties endured by the various victorias, the writing was a sustained exercise in elegance. if that makes sense? i'm not totally sure how to describe it. the writing is beautiful, but it can also be matter-of-fact at times. somehow, leroux has balanced that in a formal way that doesn't feel pretentious.

leroux went straight for my empathy gene. OOF! as i was reading, i found it difficult to not become attached to many of the victorias, and feel worry and concern for them. with the start of each new victoria, the outcome is known. the in-between was fairly harrowing for many of the victorias.

this is a very creative and clever book. rather than smashing us in the face with its purpose, leroux is a kind guide. i believe her purpose in writing each of these stories, and fictionalizing a true event, was to provide a window into the lives of women, and the challenges faced just by existing. the sad point of truth is that a real woman disappeared, and died outside. no one missed her, or was looking for her. even after intense efforts to identify her and find family or friends, investigators (and the media) were not successful. how easy it is for a woman to vanish, and no one notices. leroux gives value and purpose to each of her victorias.

there were some motifs which spanned across the stories which really grabbed my attention and made me curious... unfortunately they weren't much discussed at the meeting. if you've read this one, i would LOVE to hear your thoughts on the motifs of the straight north arrow, one blue eye and one green eye, and the repeated use of 'eon' as a surname - d'eon, on one occasion.

this book made for a really interesting book club discussion - there really is a lot of ground to cover in considering each story, and the volume as a whole. the group was fairly divided between loving it and really disliking it. one member was so angry at the book - mostly, i believe, by what the book asks of readers. they were not having it. another member was so emotionally gutted by it they had to set the book aside after each story to recover. it did turn out to be a polarizing read for the group. so i was a bit of an outlier by falling in the middle. but... books that create this reaction always seem to have more dynamic discussions, don't they? ( )