Orpheus Builds A Girl

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Heather Parry is a major talent’ Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea ‘I am in awe of this wonderful book. I loved the way this novel explored fascism's links to the control of the female body, and the social complicity that allows professional white men to wield power in the most horrific ways.

Gabi's chapter's are filled with something else unsettling, herself being unsettled and anxious throughout her life; always thinking of keeping her family together and ooking out for her younger more robust and adventurous sisters. Based on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story.Getting this secondary perspective greatly added to the story and it was a shock switching from the doctors very strange monologue to the sisters and sort of having the true horror revealed to you through her eyes where the doctor couldn't see it. The problem with this is that it's abundantly clear to us pretty much from the start that Wilhelm is crazy: after all, as a child he has a weirdly co-dependent relationship with his grandmother and cuddles up to her dead body for days till they're found together. It has one of the best unreliable narrators I've read and a counter-narrator in the shape of the victim's sister that humanises the woman the protagonist is determined to objectify. There’s also interesting commentary on important topics like immigration, xenophobia, misogyny, obsession, mental health, paraphilias, among other things, and the author never comes across as excessively preachy. The most interesting thing about this book was that it was based on a real life case and I found myself really drawn into the story - shocked and disturbed by what I was reading and constantly looking details up to find out if they were true.

Wilhelm uses his intellect and resources; the pedestal his Grandmother raised him on, and his own ability to spin a story, to construct a justification for his actions, threading the breadcrumbs throughout his history and recollection isn't it curious that there is no-one to back up his claims from his past? As a German, the part that took place in Germany also felt off to me, it didn't feel like Germany and even some of the names didn't make any sense. ORPHEUS is written in part as a scientific biopic from the personal statement of Wilhelm von Tore; the doctor using this manuscript as a justification and confession for his actions in relation to his "life's work and purpose" in relation to Luci. Or maybe leave Luci’s real personality a mystery and making our unreliable narrator the only source of information on how she was in life, that could’ve been real creepy. I might’ve missed it, but the real Elena wasn’t mentioned in the Acknowledgments or any other part in my copy.The point I'm making is that we're never taken in by Wilhelm for a second so there's no need for a 'sane' narrative to contextualise his mad one and all it serves to do is slow down the pace as it fills in unnecessary backstory and then repeats what we already know from a different perspective. Sign our petition to keep people in their homes Urgent action is needed to prevent even more people being pushed into homelessness.