HARDLY KNEW HER: Stories
Laura Lippman
William Morrow
Fiction/Short Stories
ISBN: 9780061584992
Dark, smart and violent, bestselling author Laura Lippman's first collection of short stories have a fascinating and sinister edge. HARDLY KNEW HER contains 16 tales and one novella, most told from the perspective of desperate and depressed women who find their sexuality to be both a liberating source of power and a confining detriment.
Lippman is an accomplished mystery and crime writer, and the stories here have her signature style, combining a journalistic voice with a highly charged emotional intensity (not to mention a scathing wit). In these selections there is usually a sad and cynical outcome, and even though, a few stories in, the resolution of each tale becomes familiar and predictable, each is entertaining and well-written.
Two stories center on Lippman's well-known character, private investigator Tess Monaghan. Another, as well as the novella, revolves around a former street-walker turned madame and suburban prostitute named Heloise. In “One True Love,” Heloise's two lives collide when a john turns out to be the father of a boy on her own son's soccer team. She must figure out how to protect herself from the damage he could do to her legally, emotionally and physically, and she especially must protect her young son Scott. In “Scratch a Woman,” Heloise's conflict is with her half-sister Meghan, an uptight and emotionally damaged suburban mom whose attempted murder of her husband is witnessed by her dangerous neighbor. In the Heloise portions of the book, we get a sense of what brought the sisters to these sad points in their lives, but the majority of the stories show us just acts of violence, and the moments before and after them.
In “The Crack Cocaine Diet,” two young women try to buy cocaine in order to lose weight but end up murderers; in “Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft),” we meet a unique type of killer and are treated to a story within a story. In the title story, “Hardly Knew Her,” 16-year-old Sofia wrests power from her abusive father, literally locking him out of her life. The male characters here are most often victimizers turned victim. One interesting exception is the young narrator of “Black-Eyed Susan,” who is witness to the aftermath of a murder. While in many ways here the characters are one-dimensional and, for the most part, completely despicable, the stories are entertaining and wickedly fun.
Lippman's world is not for the faint of heart: it is full of prostitutes, handguns, unhappy marriages and blunt force trauma. Even though the violence is often, and the sex almost always, presented in a less than graphic manner, the acts are vivid; the details are less important than the mood she successfully creates.
By turns chilling, funny, heartbreaking and disturbing, HARDLY KNEW HER is an excellent foray into crime fiction that will thrill both Lippman fans and those who normally pass up on the genre.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
