{"id":3584,"date":"2020-03-06T06:03:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T14:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2020-03-06T06:03:02","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T14:03:02","slug":"carol-goodman-the-sea-of-lost-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/carol-goodman-the-sea-of-lost-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Carol Goodman: The Sea of Lost Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Carol Goodman\u2019s luscious prose doesn\u2019t mask her storytelling drive, and it\u2019s a haunting and unforgettable combination.\u00a0 The Sea of Lost Girls <\/em>is set at a girl\u2019s boarding school in Maine, centering on the family of Tess, Harmon and Rudy.\u00a0 Tess and Harmon both work at the school; Rudy is Tess\u2019s son and Harmon\u2019s stepson, as well as a student at the school. The book kicks off with him texting his mother in the middle of the night, and she rushes off to find out what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

As a reader, I was instantly drawn into the dynamic between Tess and her son, who has had some troubles but whom she loves fiercely.\u00a0 Her greatest goal is that of any mother\u2019s: to protect him.\u00a0 And, as it turns out, he needs it.\u00a0 His girlfriend, Lila, whom he had been fighting with, turns up dead the next morning and suspicion falls on both Rudy and Harmon in turn.<\/p>\n

Tess is forced to re-examine her life and the events leading up to Lila\u2019s death as her husband and son are both taken to the police station as persons of interest.\u00a0 So much of Tess\u2019s story is about shame \u2013 as her backstory is teased out, we learn of her very early relationship with an older man who virtually kept her prisoner.\u00a0 She has obviously started over, but the scars remain.<\/p>\n

As Tess continues her own investigation, it becomes clear that Lila was working on a project about several girls who had disappeared from the school in the 50\u2019s \u2013 myth has declared them victims of the \u201cmaiden stone,\u201d but there\u2019s more to the story, which comes out in various ways and at various times throughout the book.<\/p>\n

The shame Tess feels is played back to her in many ways,\u00a0 and the ultimate reflection of it is a school performance of The Crucible, <\/em>where Arthur Miller\u2019s story of hysterical young women shamed, accused and sent to their deaths backs up her own themes.<\/p>\n

Goodman has created a story reflective of our own times and the changes and lack of changes that still exist.\u00a0 The idea of demeaning and shaming women, unfortunately, is still with us, but the way young women are starting to fight back and respond is illuminated in Goodman\u2019s story. Mystery novels are so often intelligent examinations of life as it is lived at the moment, and this book is an illustration of the ways an author can tell a story and write about the times she\u2019s living in simultaneously.<\/p>\n

The mystery element is fabulous, and the ending has a wonderful twist, the kind that\u2019s a surprise but has been carefully set up by this intelligent author. There was much to think about when I finished, and much to enjoy as I sped through the pages of this wonderfully written and fully realized novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol Goodman\u2019s luscious prose doesn\u2019t mask her storytelling drive, and it\u2019s a haunting and unforgettable combination.\u00a0 The Sea of Lost Girls is set at a girl\u2019s boarding school in Maine, centering on the family of Tess, Harmon and Rudy.\u00a0 Tess and Harmon both work at the school; Rudy is Tess\u2019s son and Harmon\u2019s stepson, as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[329,330,333,14,13,332,331,291],"class_list":["post-3584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-boarding-schools","tag-carol-goodman","tag-maine","tag-psychological","tag-suspensethriller","tag-the-crucible","tag-the-sea-of-lost-girls","tag-william-morrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3586,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions\/3586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}