I am reading this as a favour to a colleague. It is that reason, and that reason alone, that I will finish the story but - and it is a big but - I am not enjoying the book at all. The premise is that a surviving identical twin is 'messed up' as her sister committed the appalling crime of shooting several classmates. I read because it is pleasurable. But let's face it, how enjoyable can it be to be immersed in someone else's nightmare filled with grief and chaos? High school shootings are real - thankfully not in Australia - but real none the less. This story is painful, and not in a therapeutic 'good' way:
I could picture it. I could picture it exactly, without even trying. Countless versions of you in that school dress, aiming Dad's gun with psycho-steady hands. Kids running for their lives over and over again. Puddles of blood like the ones on the bitumen, but everywhere, so much that it looked fake. The sound of screams and gunshots and death just like I heard that day, but played on constant rotation. One horrific soundtrack laid over another and another, until you wished you were deaf. Bodies laid out in a line like I'd seen before, but stretching on forever. Versions of you gunning down other versions of you. Kids escaping one, only to come face to face with another. (p.76)
Well I'm a third of the way through. I wonder if Barker felt better after writing this depressing drivel. If so, at least one person has benefited from the process.
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