ARA Review by Stoneman+1eye of The Girl Who Cheated Death

[Stoneman+1eye]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, The Girl Who Cheated Death.]

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3 out of 5 stars

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Alexandra, a nerdy young woman of eighteen, meets Jeremy the attractive new boy in town with her best friend Kate. She learns an important life lesson at Jeremy’s party. Her experience causes a chain of events that leads to a car accident in which she loses her parents and her six year old sister in the blink of an eye. Immediately after the crash, Alex, which is what others call her, has a vision of a hideous man in pinstripe suit coming to collect the souls of the dead. Alex miraculously survives, but she keeps seeing the man in pinstripe suit, whom she later identifies as Azrael, the angel of death. During her recovery, Alex discovers a friend who truly and selflessly loves her. She eventually falls in love with him.

Alex is however plagued by the return of the demonic Azrael. She is determined to conquer her fear and try to deal with this vision which is considered by others as post-traumatic hallucination. She discovers inadvertently that by saving a soul from the snare of Azrael, she travels to an alternate past in which the saved person lives a normal life. In this alternate reality, however, Alex's life changes as well, and she is the only person who remembers the other reality. To Alex’s dismay, in this world, her boyfriend and her best friend Kate are lovers. After a discussion with her science teacher Mr. Polderman, Alex realizes how she can get rid of Azrael and save her family at the same time. But is Azrael who Alex thinks he is? Is she willing to risk everything to save her family? What if her theory is wrong? Can she afford to pay the price if she is wrong? To enjoy this book, the reader must never peek at the last page.

In terms of criticism, I would like to first clarify that I hold a rather high standard. I would also like to provide specific constructive criticisms which hopefully contribute to the improvement of authorship and readership. Whatever my honest opinion maybe, it is only one person’s perception, and it is not meant to discourage the author. I find that the story The Girl Who Cheated Death holds much promise but it has been poorly developed. The end result gives one the unhappy feeling of having tasted corked wine. Most readers get their first impression from the first chapter, if not the first paragraph; sometimes, the first line gives a strong clue as to the quality of the book. I’ll have to say The Girl Who Cheated Death has failed to capture my imagination in this regard. In fact, the story gives no hint that it is worth my attention until almost half way into the book. I would assume that less patient readers would have given up by then.

The storytelling progresses in a straight line which lacks the surprise element and makes events predictable. The idea of telling a story with inverted timelines and flash backs has been with us for three thousand years starting with Homer’s Odyssey. I still can’t forget the shock I got when I first read “Slaughterhouse Five” in high school, with its erratic juxtaposition of timelines. I can imagine that Alex’s story would be much more interesting if it starts with her waking up in the hospital after having saved Isabelle Nelson’s grandson, and describing how she slowly remembers the other reality. How rich the story could become with the description of Alex’s emotions in discovering each surprising memory of the alternate past!

I’m also dissatisfied with the book’s literary quality. There are many grammatical errors and poor usage of the language. For example, “As I’d think about it … I’d felt so safe … I’d felt as though …” making use of contractions to hide the poor grammar. “(To see) an imaginary figure I had manifested at a time …” is an erroneous usage of “manifested.” To “formulate a memory” is a poor way to evoke one. I was at a loss for words when I saw “a flutter of pain” and “a flutter of jealousy.” “I feared and hated him in equal measures” Is simply wrong because “in equal measure” is not plural. There are clichés such as “stuff my face” and “inhale the pancakes,” as well as many uninspiring metaphors such as “his face was tomato red” and “I was shaking as if I was wearing a bathing suit in February.” There are also too many unflattering descriptions based on anatomy such as “linger on my retinas,” “fill my nostrils,” and “ball in my stomach.” While the dialogue is generally fluid and easy to follow, it is interspersed with ill-advised adverbs such as “I asked quizzically” or “I said hoarsely.” Finally, Dr. Khan becomes Dr. Kahn only a paragraph apart and no one has caught the glaring error.

Alex, having fallen in love, has her first intimate experience with the opposite sex. This could have been a beautiful description of Alex’s emotions and her discovery of selfless love. Unfortunately, I got the feeling that the event was rather banal and embarrassing. Alex also must have the qualities of great love, great wisdom, and great courage to save her family. This would have been a fantastic opportunity to contemplate her internal struggle such as in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be.” The book has nothing of the sort. Azrael, the angel of death, is another missed opportunity. His outward appearance as a man akin to Mephistopheles of Goethe’s Faust has much potential but ends up in the story with a lot of demonic hissing. Alex’s musings of hell bestows upon us the following tortured description: “eternal marathon of torment.” One can almost feel Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton turning in their graves. Other than various far-fetched situations manipulated to tell the story of Alexandra in a coherent manner, a glaring gap in credibility is the complete failure of everyone in the know to consult religious experts after realizing Alex has been frequented by the angel of death named Azrael. This angel is well known in all the Judaic religions (described as Abrahamic in the book). Where is the wise priest, or sage rabbi, or pious imam? Alex’s uncle Rick who has taken her under his roof after the car accident is in fact a religious person. It’s painful to read such a promising story with all these squandered opportunities.

The telling of Alex’s story in The Girl Who Cheated Death can only be described as pedestrian at best. Reading the book is much like watching a slow motion screening of an Ingmar Bergman film except without the beauty and the substance of a Bergman film. The pace does however pick up past the mid-point, and the finale does merit a star in the rating. Furthermore, I recognize that most readers are not as critical as I am. The Girl Who Cheated Death is a fairly readable tale that can be finished in one easy sitting, and the book as a whole is perfectly accessible to the average reader, which is not an unreasonable goal for modern fiction authors. I therefore rate the book 3 out of 5 stars .

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