The Dead Girl by Melanie Thernstrom is one of those books that has been popping up on my ‘must read’ lists for years (it was first published in 1990) and I finally read it during my annual home visit to Australia last month. It’s the memoir of a young college student whose best friend was brutally murdered.
PLEASE NOTE: there are a few spoilers in this book review.
There is no question that this is the work of an extremely gifted writer, but a lot of readers might come up disappointed. Because even though the book seems to deliberately target the ‘true crime’ genre, essentially it’s a memoir. Eg, you don’t need to include the words ‘A True Story’ on the cover of a memoir — it’s kind of implied.
I mainly bought The Dead Girl: A True Story because it had rave reviews, but I was expecting a true crime book. So I felt a bit cheated. Not because it isn’t well written, but because it isn’t written in the form of the book I thought I was buying (does that make sense). After all, a true crime book deals with facts, but this memoir is primarily about the author’s own feelings.
The Dead Girl is written stream of consciousness-style, and the reader is completely in the head of a young college student (Melanie) whose childhood best friend (Roberta) has just moved away to attend a different university. Roberta disappears suddenly in a set of awkward circumstances and five weeks later her body is found, brutally murdered.
The story unfolds through a series of Roberta’s letters and the scattered memories of Melanie. Like any young person who’s not long out of their teens, the story jumps around and focuses on how the disappearance, murder, and loss of a best friend is affecting their life. And like most people that age (I certainly was no exception) there is very little thought for others — like Roberta’s parents, siblings, and other friends.
Melanie didn’t paint her dead friend as an angelic BFF. We learn that Roberta was dark, complicated, brilliant, and excessively moody. Melanie brings up Roberta’s boyfriend issues, insecurities, an abortion, depression, and problems relating to her parents. Should she?
That certainly is a troubling part of the book, because Roberta’s parents (who are also openly discussed at length) did not approve of Melanie’s recounts and expressly forbade her to reproduce the letters from Roberta. It isn’t until the end that we discover the letters — that appear in bold at the beginning of each chapter and section break — are actually fictitious.
I’m still not sure how to process that — because even the title (a true story) becomes a little misleading.
But it’s a memoir and as a story it’s complex, raw, and real. It is told over a number of years and we feel Melanie’s immediate obsession for remaining connected to Roberta, travelling to California to help with the search for her friend. Then as the years pass (memories fade) Roberta becomes less real, less important, and more made up. And that’s truth.
Love the book for its raw honesty, or hate the book for its whiney self-indulgence — I think it’s useful to know that the author’s original journalling was a form of catharsis and only submitted as a university thesis. It was actually Melanie Thernstom’s professor who showed the piece to a literary agent who promptly organised an advance of USD$367,000 (in 1990). Would you have turned that down?
Me? I’d like to think I might. But …
