Word: thernstrom
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...dead girl becomes, literally and figuratively, a cold, slick marketing strategy. Some say the book, which has a grainy, close-up photo of Lee on the cover, even looks tastless. And that the title, The Dead Girl, seems exploitative. The letters between Thernstrom and her friend published in the book are fictional; Thernstrom could not obtain copyright permission from Lee's parents...
...charges are justified. In a way, Thernstrom exploits the very person she sets out to elegize. She exploits Lee as a symbol of innocence, a generic representation of society's victimization of and violence against women. But as Thernstrom writes, "Elegies to reality are hard to write...
...Thernstrom's credit that she makes this elaborate tale of injustice seem so real to the reader. She accomplishes this by strongly, effectively communicating who Roberta Lee was, what she liked, what she wanted, what pained her. Thernstrom does not allow Lee to become a two-dimensional character doomed to die. The senselessness of her friend's death is never forgotten by the book...
...reader. Thernstrom avoids overblown prose, and her work is mimetic. She cannot explain the reasons for the egregious crime, because, she suggests, there is not always an answer to why. Given the topic and the author's near-brutal realism, The Dead Girl at times reads like an extended obituary. But the work never fails to be engrossing and rewarding...
...Dead Girl is imbued with a poignant warmth. The digressive book is given to flashback and careful detail, and Thernstrom writes intimately about Lee and their frank discussions. It seems odd to some that events like Lee sabotaging her own chances of going to MIT, or Lee's first sexual encounter and pregnancy scare would be included in a popular work like The Dead Girl. But in reading, it becomes obvious that Thernstrom wants--indeed needs--the reader to know the artistic and capricious girl she knew. And although Lee, in Thernstrom's candid depiction of her, is not always...