Initial sign that Karen Hamilton’s thriller doesn’t follow foreseeable lines about feminine hysteria are located in the subject. The Perfect Girlfriend may be the best moniker for a blackly comedic tale about a woman, proven to some as Elizabeth yet others as Juliette, whose fixation with her ex-boyfriend flora into an absurdist fantasy with harmful outcomes.
Nate are a pilot, plus in his frequent absences Juliette moves unseen into their life, allowing by herself into their London apartment, clinging the girl garments in his garments, scrutinising the contents of his toilet cabinet to evaluate his county of fitness, stashing his favourite treats in the freezer. Next she will get a position as a flight attendant along with his flight.
The evident obliviousness of “Nate” for this barrage against their privacy prompts the reader to inquire whether he is a product or service of delusion. But rely on: Juliette’s adeptness as a stalker does not convert to dishonesty as a narrator. Hamilton goes all-in in the mind of a lady who is able to validate everything in search of this lady goal, and also the Perfect girl may be see both for the activities quotient – in fact it is large – and for the ideas into just how some body with an abnormal or errant character ways the world.
Juliette has actually determined how-to perform normality and give the effect of connection with other people
– “It’s how friendships run: you share strategies” – and her remembrance of the woman earliest experience with Nate huggle dating, at resorts reception where she worked, betrays their impractical view of real interactions: “Nate got starred in living like a world from an intimate novel . . . [he] featured as if he had taken in the best components of lifestyle and shrugged down things annoying or unfortunate.”
The image of a fractured individuality deepens making use of the return of a high-school frenemy and an insatiable cravings for focus and affection: “I would like to function as the kind of individual that other people might look into – in a restaurant, say, and on occasion even merely taking the family to the park – just who individuals might dream to be.”
Once more, performance in the place of personhood, if in case Hamilton often gets as well florid in her own reinvention of cliche (“Revenge are a recipe well supported cold, and my own will likely be frozen”), she balances the extreme actions with the current with a research from the factors that cause Juliette’s pathology, in a subtly told origin facts in which she revisits the girl childhood house for her mother’s funeral. The indications comprise usually around: whenever Nate finished their connection, Juliette very first would not transfer and then hid his passport so he couldn’t head to function.
Basically were to liken Juliette to a genuine people, it might be Lisa Nowak, the NASA astronaut whom drove 1,400 kilometres from Texas to Florida, apparently sporting grown nappies so she wouldn’t need to prevent, on an objective to kidnap an enchanting opponent. There are changes of land almost as hilarious and preposterous when you look at the Great Girlfriend, and a remarkable arc of aspiration and disintegration with many real-life competitors.
The ending will madden some and raise the spectre of Gone Girl’s controversial conclusion, although Great Girlfriend – billed in a cover line, predictably, as “the must-read thriller of 2018” – is not likely to own much to complement they this season as a rollicking facts of ecstatic insanity.
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As the coastline publication reviewer, Stephanie Jones stocks the woman thinking every week from the latest releases.
Stephanie features a BA (Hons) ever sold and English books, and a background in journalism, mag writing, pr and corporate and customer marketing and sales communications.
Stephanie is actually a factor on New Zealand Book Council’s ‘mentioning publications’ podcast show (listen here), and an associate for the 2016 Ngaio Marsh prize judging screen. She will be able to be found on Twitter ParsingThePage.