Let me start by saying that The Raising is a novel with potential. Its cover shows a blond girl lying in the grass, her profile illuminated by moonlight. The story is about a seemingly perfect sorority girl hitting it off with the wrong guy and dying tragically in a car accident. From the beginning, the author slips a few hints about her coming back from the dead (perhaps in a sensual vampire-like fashion?) while slowly revealing what happened in the preceding year. The trouble I had with this novel, is that I was expecting to encounter more suspense and eerie scenes in the first 130 pages, but when I realized that it could take maybe more than half of the book to see anything happening at all, I just could not muster any more enthusiasm for the book... and so I decided to stop reading. Personally, I felt that the author tried too hard at giving all the main characters (Craig, Perry, Nicole, Shelly and Mira) sufficient depth. At the point where I stopped reading, I could still not understand why Mira was married to a good-for-nothing stay-at-home dad or how Shelly's character would be more credible if she were portrayed as a lesbian.* Furthermore, even though I am an university student myself, I could not relate to the students or their lifestyles whatsoever. An explanation for this could be that student life can differ enormously, according to the country you live in. The structure of the chapters confused me, it was difficult (with the several main characters at the back of my mind) to understand whether something was happening now or a year ago. The story itself was proceeding too slowly, and I kept wondering whether the author intended to further explore the topic of (coping with) loss of a loved one, or perhaps the challenges of college life... it was difficult to believe that the story would eventually reveal what really happened on that dreadful night when Nicole died, and/or whether she had indeed risen from the dead in one way or another. In retrospect, I feel disappointed because I was expecting to read something different. It doesn't mean it's not a good book, just that I, as one individual reader, failed to enjoy it. *GLBT lit is something I'd like to explore more, but I felt that in this particular character it did not add to her personality at all.
2020-12-31 11:57
