I was a teenager when I first read this book, translated into Portuguese. Nicci French quickly became my favorite thriller writer(s), but over the years that faded. My copy of Killing Me Softly was then lost when I lent it to an acquaintance. It was after that that I learned not to lend books to people I didn't fully trust.
It was just last week that I found this novel again, at a book shop in Colva, Goa, where tourists leave their things to be sold to help a charity. Books there are all 50 rupees each. I decided to replace my lost copy with this one, this time in English. Then, as I wanted something entertaining and not too dense to read, I decided to reread this one and see what my own fuss about it was about. Well, I can see why I did like it.
The prose is very to the point and through Alice one discovers a world of obsessive, passionate and even cruel love that escalates and escalates until it climaxes and leaves one sighing for more. I always found her, the narrator, to be somewhat distant at certain moments, summarizing certain details but not the whole picture.
However, that incomplete, partial vision gives this book a chilling voyeuristic perspective, almost like watching it all unfold through a peephole. For some reason, though, reading it feels sadistic, like satisfying a morbid curiosity. One wants to know how this romance gets intense, how much more can happen, and then at times you're left with bits of dialog that leaves it to the imagination. I guess that's one of the reasons why I liked this book so much when I was a teenager, it's because it's so cruel to readers sometimes.
Reading it is a pleasure. I have seen the movie, some time back, and I remember it had a different twist. I still prefer the book. I prefer the Adam my young imagination created and that stuck until now.
8/10
Vanessa
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