Behind the Pages

Originally found on my blog...




3.5......
Also known as a retelling of the classic novel, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. New Girl is another modern day retelling of a classic tale. Although I haven't read Rebecca yet, I have it on my bookshelf... sitting... waiting...

The mystery starts straight away, pulling us into the mystery surrounding Becca's disappearance, as well as finding out how much she changed the school. We see when we are in Becca's point of view how the school was. Strict, quiet, no rules being broken. But then as Becca shows up, we can see how much she has changed it into like most modern day schools, parties, boys, hook-ups, rule breaking. Becca brings all of this with her. We see when we get into the New Girl's point of view, how different everything and everyone is.

The change in point of view is a big issue for me in this novel. When changing P.O.V.'s, we are given an indication as to when we are with Becca, but we don't have anything to tell us we are back in the present day, until we get a third of the way through the chapter. Half of the time we are guessng whos P.O.V. we are in. From this, we don't connect to the characters as we could and as we should.

Even as we go further into the novel, we start to realize that every chapter switches P.O.V. Then we come across half-way through the novel that now, the New Girl is two chapters long.

We constantly see the New Girl's struggle throughout the book, to stay true to herself and not succumb to what everyone is saying she is doing the things that they tell her to do, for the sake that Becca will come back. She is a strong character, no matter what Dana and the others throw at her, she picks herself up and fights (in her own way).

Is it just me, or does the whole novel not feel like a whole year, that we find out is as the whole time the New Girl has been at the school Time flys when having fun, yet was it really all that fun.

I love when Harbison has done in the sense that we don't even know the protagonists name, only as 'New Girl'. This gets us pulled into the world more because when we realize we don't know her name, we stop and try think back in the novel incase we forgot it, yet we only come up with Becca's name. Still brewing with the fact that Becca is always there, never to be forgotten, never to leave our thoughts. Also, forgetting the New Girl's name in the novel brings forth that Becca is the one to focus on and the one that is important. We do get told her name though, which brings out it's own meaning.