Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies {Goodreads}
Published by Oneworld Publications in 2015
Let me
introduce you to Pearl, not your loveable, sweet type of girl. She’s vicious
and mean. She has a very dark personality – I felt quite distressed at times –
but she’s not the only one with issues, believe me.
Told in
vignettes (the left pages have only one word and the right pages have the
mini-story, the vignette) the reader gets snippets from Pearl’s childhood up to
her adolescence. You get to discover her and her environment and in a sort of
twisted way, you get to understand why she’s how she is.
It’s a
story that got under my skin and it sure can pack a punch. I read it in one
day. Once I started it I couldn’t stop. I needed to know what was going to
happen; I needed to know where Pearl’s story was going to take me, emotionally
speaking.
Reasons She Goes to the Woods is a very disturbing book; it’s not
for everybody as it is perverse, violent and sexual but gloriously written and
the reason I found it so impressive. It’s so highly evocative and Deborah Kay
Davies can sure write. It is lyrical and beautifully unsettling. A risky story
for sure but such a worthy read if you feel it’s a novel for you.