See How Small by Scott Blackwood Published by Little, Brown on January 20th 2015
Genres: Crime, Fiction
Pages: 224
Format: eBook
ISBN: 031637380X
ASIN: B00KAEXM3S
Goodreads
A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose "that's as fine as any being written by an American author today." (Ben Fountain) One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. SEE HOW SMALL tells the stories of the survivors--family, witnesses, and suspects--who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous. Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. "See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart," they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.
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Today I did something I rarely do before writing a review. I plugged “See How Small Reviews” into Google and read what others had to say about this book. Wow! The reviews were all over the place: a mixture of good and not so good reviews from ordinary folks like me and a mixture of good and average reviews from those who write reviews for a living. What I gleaned from all this reading was what I believe every author hopes for when he or she writes a book. See How Small will make readers think. Readers will not walk away from this book and forget it. As for myself, it not only made me think, it made me feel. It puzzled me. It made me cry. It broke my heart. It made me smile. It made me angry.
Author Scott Blackwood based See How Small on an incident that still resonates through the Austin, Texas area to this very day. In 1991, four young girls are brutally raped and murdered then left to burn inside a yogurt shop where they worked. Although the author changes the number of victims to three and the yogurt shop becomes an ice cream parlor, one element persists. Over 20 years later, this crime remains unsolved.
Many of the negative reviews I read complained that the story ended with no satisfying resolution. The families who are still hoping for a solution will likely tell you that aspect of the book accurately represents their sense of frustration with the lack of closure. Some of the negative reviews centered around the way the story was told…too many characters, a scattered plot, a disturbing presentation. Yet careful reading reveals 5 main characters: Kate, the mother of two of the girls; Jack, the fireman who initially discovers the bodies of the girls inside the burned-out ice cream parlor; Rosa, the dogged reporter who refuses to give up on finding the killers; Michael, who wants to feel innocent of the crime even though he can’t forget; Hollis, who, because of a wartime head injury, “can’t find the mental thread on which to string the everyday beads of his life”. If the plot seems scattered it only mirrors the real life story’s disorder, confusion, and screw-ups. Rather than being disturbing, the presentation is a gift from the mind of the author. The literary devices he uses are effective vehicles to portray the dream-like quality as one almost feels the dead girls floating above the action wondering why there is no justice for them; the chaos as the families involved are torn apart by loss and uncertainty; the insanity as certain characters descend deeper into paranoia and obsession.
The language is poetic, lyrical, and disturbing. There are times when the horror of the events is lost in the beauty of the language and a tenuous sort of hope rises from the ashes. There is no question that Scott Blackwood has the gift. This book was written with an artist’s pen by a man with something to say. The author’s use of figurative language is singular. . .the fire imagery alone burns its way through the story with an incandescent flame. I can easily envision See How Small turning into a favorite subject for scholarly papers. If you are looking for a traditional mystery/thriller/whodunit, you will be disappointed. The story is chilling without being graphically brutal, a mystery with no obvious solution. “Some stories don’t have an ending even if you want them to.” The message for me is not only “see how small a thing it is that keeps us apart” but “see how small a thing it is that binds us together” as our mostly fragmented lives are joined by our common experience of loss, grief and hope.
I encourage you to read “I Wanted to Push This Some” – Scott Blackwood on His Novel “See How Small” for a candid and enlightening interview with the author.
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