The words Mathilda Savitch caught my attention. A first name that contrasted the surname, in time and culture. The front cover showed a picture of a young girl looking over her shoulder and the authors name was distinctly European. And they are a lot more liberated about topics such as coming of age. It turns out Victor Lodato is American, at least he lives there. But this book is still brilliant.
Mathilda Savitch is struggling to deal with the death of her sister, almost exactly one year ago. But Mathilda has plans. Her ceaseless, enquiring mind soaks up information from the world around her. Experimenting through peoples reactions to what she does. Always working towards breaking into her sisters email in the hope she will find who pushed her from the platform.
Mathilda Savitch is a coming of age story that might be compared to books like Lovely Bones. With the story here told from the surviving daughters perspective. But it is not. It's a lot sharper, a lot cleverer. It's not just a story, but the mechanism of a child's mind and how it is shaped by loss and by the world she lives in.
It is tempting having just closed one of the best books of this lifetime, to endlessly wax lyrical. Too tempting in fact, but I will limit myself to just this paragraph. Mathilda Savitch is a book that mesmerises, will make a fictional character feel so real you can almost hear her breathe. A book of this time that is timeless for that very reason. Its peers are classics written by the likes of Nabokov, Bronte, Austen, Fitzegerald et al. It is utterly charming and heartbreaking. Palpably so. It is utterly brilliant and damning.
You should probably read it.
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