Little Girls
Ronald Malfi
Kensington
June 30, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
Ronald Malfi manages to yet again live up to his own high standards, and even exceed them, with his latest offering, Little Girls. It is a haunted house story (maybe), a ghost story (maybe) and a horror story (certainly). Malfi’s literate and smooth prose reaches down the reader’s throat and twists their guts with tension from the first page to the last.
At its core, Little Girls is a classic horror story in the vein of The Haunting of Hill House and Stir of Echoes, using subtle cues to evoke real emotion. Laurie Genarro returns to the home of her childhood after the death of her father to find that things are…wrong. From the circumstances of her father’s death to the seminal events of her youth, Laurie must make sense of the factors that have shaped her life. As she must work to resolve her late father’s estate Laurie must also work to understand the events revolving around her.
Along with husband Ted and daughter Susan, Laurie and her family are a very well realized modern American family. The supporting characters work similarly well, each doing their part to move the story along. The deceased father’s in-home nurses, Ms. Lorton and Ms. Larosche, have small roles, but each manages to complete an interesting and surprising character arc by the novel’s end. The Genarro’s neighbor, ten-year-old Abigale, is especially excellent.
There is a genuine tension throughout the story, an unputdownable quality that is tough to find in part in any book, let alone for the full 300-plus pages of a single one. This is driven by the honest emotion the characters experience and the attachment the reader forms to each character.
Little Girls is a book that keeps you guessing, convincing you time after time that you finally have it figured out. And time after time it proves you wrong. The novel will have you guessing until the last page and maybe long after that last page if closed.
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