This book reads like a very long poem. It's not so much a story with a conflict and a plot. In fact, the conflict happens in the very beginning, and the rest of the book is trying to puzzle the pieces together.That said, I spent most of the book a bit confused. I spent most of it trying to figure out how the story fit in with the prologue - which is repeated at the end, where everything comes together. Honestly, I still don't completely understand it though. So I was a tad bit frustrated by that.However, I think that's the point of the story; it's vague and open to interpretation. Again, making it a lot like a poem.The writing style was okay. It was almost overly-poetic, at times making Diana sound sappy and even like a disorganized schizophrenic at times. I think it tried a little too hard to be surreal, or something like that.The main story-line of it was slightly boring to me. The hum-drum of being a work-at-home mom was boring to me, but there were interesting parts thrown in that were slightly Edgar Allan Poe/Twilight Zone - esque. Those parts were interesting, and added to the over-all mystery of not completely understanding what is going on.Also, the book was written with back and forth passages between the main character, Diana, as a grown woman, and when she and her best friend were teenagers. The teenage timed parts never actually say which girl is doing what, so you're forced to try and puzzle that together; figure out which girl is Diana, and which is her best friend.Overall, it was an entertaining read, but I was really just waiting for the end to figure out how it all pieced together. The ending wasn't super clear to me; I'm about 95% sure I know what happened, but the book is just so overly poetic, that it is a tiny bit difficult to tell. I still have some doubt in my mind. But whatever.It was still an enjoyable read, due to the mystery of it, but most of the book was just so-so. Still liked it though.
I think this book had ambitious goals and it comes across as something that tried too hard and had no clear idea of what it wanted to be.Yes the writing is poetic, but it's also rambling and at times juvenile and seems to go off into prose instead of carrying the plot and it became less and less appealing as the story went on. The story its self was also full of holes and frustrations. The third party narrative felt detached and unhelpful. Instead of feeling anything that Diana feels we're instead watching this woman talk about her life via an unknown narrator that tells us how she feels and what she's thinking in a way that made everything drag.(view spoiler)[I get it - she dies. But to get there we have to go through this story of a middle aged woman who's obsessed with youth where the author goes out of the way to reminder you over and over how perfect it could be - except it's not perfect because of the abortion and the cheating spouse and the fact that it's told as a story of a teenage girl who imagines herself at 40 and the older version of her imaginary self starts to have guilty feelings about letting her friend die which is why she makes the decision in the end to tell the kid to shoot her - it was contrite and fell apart at the end. It's like the more details the author tried to include - such as the Catholic school and the lecturer, the less it made sense. The nun saying she switched the stories 'because I don't like you' - I understand it was in the teenage Diane's mind but things come off as juvenile and they didn't add up for a satisfying ending. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Life Before Her Eyes (2002)?
This book was largely unremarkable, which is a shame because the description and reviews I read made it sound really intriguing. Essentially, a 40-year-old woman is living a "perfect" life (and believe me, the author takes great pains to convince you how perfect her life is), and at the same time, reliving (through flashbacks) her experience of a school shooting which took place twenty-some years earlier. No, correct that--the majority of the flashbacks are of her teenage life leading up to the school shooting where she made her "life altering decision," and the present day accounts show how the decision affected her life. Sounds interesting, right?My biggest problem with this book is that the author just seems to have been too ambitious. The flowery, poetic style is just overbearing, for one. But mostly, the story with it's big fat super-secret twist at the end is just too intense. (And I really don't think I am spoiling anything by mentioning the spoiler, since the author starts hinting at it before even the midpoint of the story. Not in a foreshadowing way, but more like a little kid who can't keep a secret.)Less than twelve hours after reading it, I find I can't recall many details leading up to the ending, only that it just starts to unravel at the end. I know it's supposed to be allegorical, but instead it just feels...silly. Frankly, the writing/style/plot are just not good enough to support it.
—Susan
I really enjoyed this book at the sentence level--the language is crystalline, familiar, and beautifully constructed. Unfortunately, the story is ploddingly-paced, with the bulk of the text made up of the heroine ruminating over the details of her utterly perfect college-town life. Only the tease of an opener and rather surreal ending bring any real excitement. Kasischke is clearly a gifted writer, but this book felt unbalanced--too much interiority, not enough action. I look forward to a novel in which she pairs her well-crafted words with a more dynamic plot.
—Rebecca
. "The Life Before Her Eyes" is the story of Diana and Maureen, two seniors in high school who face a school shooter. The girls are such close friends that it is not always clear which girl the author is speaking of; this is clearly intentional, and a very interesting and effective literary technique Ms. Kasischke uses to get this point across. The friends are in the girls' bathroom, sharing a mirror as they fix their hair and makeup, when a boy they know as a quiet and unassuming classmate enters the restroom with a gun and forces them to decide which girl will die. What unfolds from there is like a trip down the rabbit hole, as the story alternates between the life the teenaged Diana shared with her best friend and the life the adult Diana shared with her husband and child. There are several people, animals, and situations that overlap between Diana's two lives that offer subtle hints to the ultimate truth of this riveting novel. Laura Kasischke's beautiful writing style and her ability to draw me into her magical stories have made me a devoted fan of her work. Her stories always stay with me long after I have turned the final page, and I close her books with a whispered, "Wow." I am always surprised and never disappointed.
—Susan Mackie powers
