Review: When being inseparable has its (major) drawbacks
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 25, 2011
Two peas in the preverbal pod, yet different as night and day. Twins, thirty-eight year old Kirk and Wayne, who are literally inseparable but as opposite as white and black, good and bad, Hyde and Jekyll.One is ying to the other's yang but both are responsible for the evil, the rape-and-murder that is the reason they end up locked up together in the same Georgia prison cell, where as implausibly as implausible gets, they meet up with the one person they are highly unlikely in the real world to ever encounter. But that's literary license for you. Karin Slaughter can write what she wants.If you're perplexed, I sort of apologize but this is a very short short story (the first chapter of another story is included as a bonus) and to clear away the cloud of confusion would only reveal too much of what is intended to surprise and grip in this story and doesn't really succeed in doing either.For me "Thorn in My Side" read as if it were a very visceral, graphic and good beginning effort from a high school kid enthralled still with body parts and functions; a thriller written by a novice better at creating cartoons than believable characters and someone not accomplished enough yet with subtlety or nuance of feeling, all the real stuff that gives a story meaning and resonance.Slaughter (appropriate last name noted) is a well established crime writer well versed in the mechanics of storytelling. In this story she isn't reaching for high literature, obviously. She is, however, trying to engage if not entertain. But too often she gets mired down in yuck and ick as when she has a character "conjuring the animalistic desire to defecate in public just to stop the insanity.""Thorn in My Side," doesn't quite measure up to the author's reputation or previous work, such as her bestselling "Fallen." If you read the story try hard to visualize the action as it unfolds. You're left with images and scenes that for me just don't work and were borderline comical at times with all those various human appendages flopping and thrashing about. This is a story I wanted to be better.