Cracks

 

Today's post is on Cracks by Sheila Kohler. It is 165 pages long and is published by Zoland Books. The cover is like a faded page in a journal with some children's legs at the top. The intended reader is someone who is interested in realistic horror. There is foul language, sex, sexuality, and rape, and violence in this novel. The story is told from first and third person perspectives. There Be Spoilers Ahead. 

From the dust jacket- Set in remote corner of South Africa in the early 1960s, Cracks is a haunting, mesmerizing story of young girls caught up in a drama of passion, longing and identity. 
Fiamma Coronna, a foreign student out walking on the grounds of her boarding school, disappears one day into the heat and dust of the Transvaal. Forty years later, she schoolmates gather at the invitation of the aged headmistress to save the school from a developer's bulldozer. They has been members of the schools swim team, each completely devoted to the their coach, Miss G., a powerfully attractive, charismatic woman, who was their first crush, their "crack". Now middle-aged, each of these woman- whether accomplished or frustrated, voluble or silent- remembers the events leading to Fiamma's disappearance. 
Through image and emotion, recollection and observation the women the horror of a long-buried secret. Cracks us a singular an stunning tale of the passion and tribalism of adolescence, an exploration of time and memory, and of the carnal violence that lies at the heart of the most innocent. 

Review- This is an odd but interesting book. The unnamed narrator is just one of the girls that the reader is seeing the story through and I think that changes as the story moves. The story is told in two different times starting the characters returning to their school then dropping back into the past as they remember Fiamma, Miss G. and what happened. Time in the past has a ream like feel, aiding the surreality of the memories and the natural fading with time that happens. One major part of the story that I didn't like, is that Miss G. is never called what she is, a pedophile. Instead the girls and the women they become see her as their leader and goddess, with no understanding of the damage Miss G. is doing to them and to Fiamma. The murder itself is shocking and unexpected. There are hints throughout the book about what was going to happen and who was going to do it. An interesting read but not for everyone. 

I give this book a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.