Brendan Dowling Author Archive
Email: bdowling@ala.org
Promiscuous in My Reading: A Conversation with Lauren Beukes
South African writer Lauren Beukes’ first two novels, Moxyland and Zootopia, were hailed as innovative takes on the sci-fi genre. With her new book, The Shining Girls, Beukes tackles the serial killer genre and comes up with a novel that is equal parts gripping and horrifying. The Shining Girls details the exploits of Harper Curtis, an unhinged grifter in Depression-Era Chicago who discovers a house that enables him to travel through time. From there, he hops through sixty years of history, visiting his victims in their youth to give them an anachronistic keepsake, and then killing them years later. When one of his intended victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives his attack, she investigates her assault and begins the nearly impossible task of tracking Curtis down. Suspenseful and unsettling, The Shining Girls has already been longlisted for The CWA Gold Dagger Award and has appeared on numerous must-read lists of the summer. Beukes discussed The Shining Girls with Brendan Dowling via e-mail on August 14th, 2013.
