Read as part of CBR16Bingo: rage. The rage of women, ex-cons, survivors is centered in this book. The opening chapter contains a monologue on female rage.
You ever have an author that you think you should like more? You just try and try with them but they can’t put it together for you?
That was Ivy Pochoda until These Women, which I read a couple months ago and will absolutely be in my Best of 2024, with a great shot to place in the top 5. A dynamo of a book.
But this ain’t it.
I think the reason why These Women came together so well for me is that each individual self-contained chapter focused on one character and how they were impacted by the serial killer. It was like looking at fresh clean clothes hung symmetrically on a line. Pochoda threaded the plot perfectly through each character.
The notion of this should work for me: set in the early days of the pandemic as two recently released prisoners play cat-and-mouse with each other for reasons that…well they’re somewhat clear but not fleshed out because we never get a deep understanding of the characters. And then halfway through, a detective character comes in and she’s interesting…but we never get a deep understanding of her either. Pochoda has all of these good ideas but —and this has been my problem with her work before — just tells the story in a weird, shallow fashion, overwriting scenes and inner monologues in a way that tries to pass for deep thinking but in reality puts distance between the reader and the story.
I grabbed this because it was a contemporary western and I needed that for another library bingo. It fits perfectly with the theme of rage. But it’s also a reminder of why Pochoda is probably not for me. These Women seems to be the exception to the rule.