Abigail Dean - Girl A (would love a chat with spoilers!)

[BabloHoney]

Has anyone read this one? I just finished it and feel I need to discuss what people thought of it!! It was so well written but so desperately sad.

I have! And I had mixed feelings

I finished it a week or so ago and it's stayed with me. So desperately sad. I guessed relatively early on about Evie, but I still cried when she says that she never regained consciousness so never knew they'd got out. The parts about Daniel were very very hard to read.

I felt so conflicted about the older brother too, getting away with his part in it and profiting from it in his professional life, but also having to recognise that he was a victim too.

It's one of those books that you can't say you enjoyed, but I'm glad I read it.

I thought it was only ok tbh. I found the boys a lot more interesting than the girls. Gabriel in particular really stayed with me.

I thought she did the childhood scenes very well, I was worried it would be graphic or excessively gratuitous but it wasn’t at all.

The adult scenes left a lot to be desired.

I know these may seem macabre, but I am actually very interested to know what interpretation others have of the scenes involving Gabriel in childhood - I’ve found the descriptions really staying with me and the ambiguity of exactly what abuse he suffered is somehow keeping this top of mind for me.

What a desperately, desperately sad book.

I also thought it was just okay. I didn’t feel compelled to pick it up, and it definitely isn’t the best book I have read this year.

@SoliloquyK

I know these may seem macabre, but I am actually very interested to know what interpretation others have of the scenes involving Gabriel in childhood - I’ve found the descriptions really staying with me and the ambiguity of exactly what abuse he suffered is somehow keeping this top of mind for me.

What a desperately, desperately sad book.

I wondered the same. When it is revealed Ethan held Gabriel down whilst his father punished him. I didn't know if it was sexual abuse as well as violence and neglect. This book really stayed with me and I cried when I found out about Evie. I didn't mind how it jumped between past and present and different characters, but I know others who read it found it too disjointed.

I have just finished reading it.So sad about Evie .Ethans character was difficult to like because of his involvement. I wished the Dad had lived so he could pay for his crimes.
Not sure about why Child A wouldn’t have children with PJ was it because she couldn’t physically have children because of the abuse or mentally she wouldn’t have them.

I assumed Gabriel was waterboarded? Or something similar, the description of the gurgling sound and him needing to be held down.

As for Lex not being able to have children, I thought it was a result of her dad striking her on the stomach when he finds the book, she described being split open at that point I think.

This was a harrowing read but I couldn't put it down. I think Ethan was a victim and it was a survival instinct on his part. I found the Delilah story interesting especially about her visiting the mother in prison.
Would a family really never have been inspected by social care or similar though ? And surely the teacher would have raised a safeguarding concern after visiting the home? I imagined it was set with the escape being about fifteen years earlier so the teacher would have been there in the last twenty years when safeguarding was a high priority in education and there would have been red flags all over the family ?
Also I couldn't help thinking that sadly it would be more likely that the five survivors would be more like Gabriel in later life - it seems less likely that four of the five would lead relatively successful adult lives.

I’ve just finished it and really “enjoyed” it. I didn’t see Evie’s death at all and wax really floored by that. I thought it was pretty accurate in terms of how they turned out as adults. Incredibly sad. I think I wanted Lex to have been able to have a relationship with the youngest brother, Noah but know that would have been impossible.

I had it out of the library so annoyingly don't have it here in front of me but I picked up on Evie straight away, although she kept you guessing. Notice that characters other than Lex refer to Daniel and Evie together - I think the lawyer in the prison is the first one to do this, certainly it's very early in the book. Does he say something like "She would write to you, even Evie and Daniel"?

I listened to it on audiobook - it was really well narrated by Holliday Grainger. I didn't pick up on the Evie storyline and that really floored me! I had to turn it off temporarily as I was driving and I was crying so much! Think I'd like to read or listen to it again with the benefit of hindsight.

I read this (or listened to it) over a weekend and it was sooooo gripping. I also wondered what happened to her stomach, like can she not have children? Such a brilliant debut.

I read this book over the weekend and was searching what other people thought happened at the end. Initially, I assumed the person on the beach was Mother but then read again and thought perhaps it was Evie? Mother because Lex had never given time of day to her mum given everything that happened but then gained insights from her siblings and the lawyer in the week she returned to the UK. She was also dressed as she had been when she turned up to Lex's school. But then it could be Evie as she would have wanted to see her, happy, alive and walking...

Ethan was a complex character and complicit in Gabriel's abuse, which I assumed was sexual. Gabriel's life was just tragic and the most haunting of all.

I read it earlier this year. I thought it was quite implausible and a bit...silly?

I had read great things about it beforehand but didn't find it remotely compelling. I'm wondering if I missing something.

Having recently seen the interview with the two survivors from the Turpin family case, I’ve realised that this has used quite a lot of detail from their story, which doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I too was confused by who was on the beach with Lex at the end.
I had presumed Evie but not really sure.

Who do you think it was?

And what was the point of it - was it that Lex was still deluded?
And all her psychologist's input over the years had failed after all?
I don't know...

I thought it was Evie that Lex saw at the end. But my question was whether the ending meant Lex was going into the water (with imagined Evie) - effectively committing suicide. Did anyone else think this?

I had it on audiobook and I don't know if it was Holliday Grainger's monotonous disinterested tone of voice but I couldn't empathise at all and didn't care what had happened to any of them.
If the premise was that Girl A was sooo badly psychologically damaged that she couldn't be bothered to engage in the world (hence monotonic moan) it might become interesting but there was no suggestion that this was the case and I gave up a third of the way through.

I was interested in how the father was a failure in life and he had no control over anything outside the family home. The scene where no one comes to his grand church opening, and the scene as they are leaving the Blackpool hotel both seemed so psychologically 'true' to me.

By contrast I didn't believe at all that a child removed from education and tortured would be working as an international corporate lawyer just a few years later. Not at all. Every time the book did a trappings of success scene it lost me.

Puffincino How about the way Ethan was ‘successful’, by using selective bits of his past in the most effective way? Did you think it was plausible? For me it was.

The more I think of the ending, the surer I get that Lex drowned herself.

I listened to this on audiobook and didn’t know anything about it beforehand. I was utterly gripped and couldn’t stop listening. I had zero idea about Evie until it was obvious and also interpreted it that Lex committed suicide by walking into the water at the end

@WhereShallWeGo

I thought it was Evie that Lex saw at the end. But my question was whether the ending meant Lex was going into the water (with imagined Evie) - effectively committing suicide. Did anyone else think this?

This is what I thought, Lex seemed to be veering between having thoughts about the future (what she'd wear to dinner with Jake) but also wrapping things up (lying to Dr K and her parents, making peace with Delilah, and warning Ethan) and I felt like she'd had enough and just wanted be be with Evie in the end. So it felt like suicide to me. I feel like vomiting after finishing this book, I'm so glad the author steered away from gratuity, but it was just too much for me by the time Delilah made her confession. I will have nightmares about poor sweet Gabriel. Very depressing.

The way I interpreted the ending, which was ambiguous, was not that Alex was going to commit suicide, but that Evie would just be a part of her forever, no matter what stage of recovery she was in. Another ambiguous part of the book to me was what happened when the father found the book under the mattress. Yes, he hit Alex in the stomach--but did he also rape her as punishment?? And perhaps Gabriel as well, which could be the source of his Gabriel's "rages."