Books by and for independent women

The Raising By Laura Kasischke

American novelist Laura Kasischke’s latest book, The Raising, still has me reeling days after reading the final words.

I am notoriously rubbish at foreseeing plot twists. I can watch the crappiest, mid-afternoon murder mystery on TV and still be shocked at who the villain is. For this reason, I’m cautious about waxing lyrical about how much this story lived up to my expectations as a gothic, ghostly mystery, but here it goes anyway.

The book is an almost five-hundred page beast split in to six parts. Craig Clements-Rabbit is a college student who has fallen madly in love with Nicole Werner, the beautiful, chaste sorority girl. Naturally, she dies. The story begins after she has been killed in a car accident with Craig at the wheel.

He is distraught, broken, but remembers nothing about that night. Craig’s roommate, Perry, a childhood friend of Nicole’s, takes a class in Death, Dying and the Undead, and with the help of his tutor, Mira, starts to investigate the ghostly sightings and encounters that have been occurring all over campus.

I’m afraid to say any more in fear of giving away any twists, but it’s vital that as many of you as possible to read this book so that we can have a proper discussion about it, before I explode.

I’ve seen some fairly harsh reviews of this book, some suggesting that it goes out with a whimper rather than a bang. But for me, the twist-oblivious, there were some real “Oh my god!” moments.

Having said that, I agree whole-heartedly that this book is by no means perfect. I have read very few books that, in my opinion, justify their four-hundred-plus page length, and this is not one of them.

I spent at least the first two parts (approximately half the book) thoroughly underwhelmed and annoyed by little, grating flaws. For example, even though the book is written is third person, Kasische uses words like “dick” and “ass” in the narration that seem jarring and crude.

Around the mid-point of the book it becomes a bit of a shag-a-thon and this language seems more appropriate there, although I think it fades out a bit, too. Kasischke becomes more poetic, using metaphors like “shell” instead of the earlier references to “pussy”.

The tone does change according to the characters you are following, and a lot of the time we are seeing the perspective of a couple of college boys so perhaps the crudeness is justified, but even so I found to be a weakness.

As I said, the main thread of story is engaging, but it is far too slow to get going. Most of the first half of the book is character development and unnecessary sub-plot, and I have to admit there were points when I wanted to give up on it.

Parts three, four and five made this book worthwhile for me, but again it goes on for too long after the mystery has been resolved. Part six jumps forward fifteen years but offers no conclusion or relevant information.

And there is an unnecessary death towards the end that will make you roll your eyes. Throughout the novel, the chapters jump back and forth between the academic year before Nicole’s death, and the one after, and it’s easy to get confused where you are, who you are with and what has already occurred.

The overwhelming theme of this book is obviously death, and by using the plot device of Perry’s university classes, Kasischke communicates some very interesting things about the folklore and myth surrounding death, particularly people’s fear of death and the undead.

The cherry-blossom symbolism is also present, on the cover and dripped in to the story a couple of times, linking to ideas of short-lived beauty and youth. Unfortunately, although the premise of this book gives it the potential to be a gripping thriller, The Raising does not mirror its subject as something brief and beautiful. In fact, a lot of the time it is quite the opposite.

Published in March by Atlantic Books, you can buy it in paperback for £7.92, or get the Kindle edition for a mere 99p.

Rating: 2.5/5

Recommended for: Patient people looking to invest in a ghostly mystery, with a little bit (quite a bit) of sex thrown in. If you like to indulge in a bit of trashy, teen horror from time to time, you might like this.

Other recommended reading: Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus! is literary fiction that looks at the short-lived romance between an infatuated boy and the chaste prom-queen type, and how they might not necessarily be as they seem, although it is very different in tone.

In terms of gothic, horror-influenced stories, often with teen girls as the protagonist, I still don’t think anyone does it better than Angela Carter, for both novels and short stories.

Cariad Martin