Burning Girl

Rating:
Summary: A riveting novel about love, lust, deceit and murder.
Review: "Burning Girl" by Neihart is a wonderful story about a boy who gets caught in a vicious scandal, but he must go further in to get out. Neihart explores sexuality, deceit and the power of love. The characters in the book seem so real and I feel like I know them. Neihart did a wonderful job, and for this he will be put on the map.

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Summary: ACCURATELY CAPTURES THE FRENZIED INDECISION OF YOUTH!
Review: "BURNING GIRL", Ben Neihart's second effort, is like strolling through a nightmare garden in the deepest night, complete with unidentifiable noises and eerie shadows lurking. It's about love, trust, friendship, and lies. It's about not knowing the easy answers, nor knowing where to turn when your world turns upside-down.

The story centers around a murder that may or may not have been committed by two friends, and the young man who loves one of these would-be murderers. Drew Burke is attending Johns Hopkins University on scholarship, where he befriends and becomes utterly enchanted by a rich, exotic and beautiful girl by the name of Bahar. The two become fast friends, but their friendship is not all it seems on the surface. Soon, Drew finds himself pushed into the arms of Bahar's brother Jake...and the ensuing drama that unfolds is enough to make Drew wish he'd never met either of these two supposed friends. Lies, deceit, manipulation and murder...a lethal cocktail which fuels this fast-paced, hallucinatory novel.

Niehart once again accurately captures the voice of youth, and the seemingly endless possibilities of every choice one makes. The confusion, and the way in which our hearts can lead us to make the wrong choices even when our intentions are good. I found myself utterly transfixed by the events as they unfolded, like a gawker at the scene of a horrible accident....unable to tear myself away.

Rating:
Summary: Ben Neihart has his finger on the pulse
Review: Burning Girl is for today's twentysomethings what Less Than Zero was for the 80s twentysomethings. Ben Neihart captures the language and sensibility of the late-90s hip, cool, rich, young crowd with such sensitivity that there can be no question who he is dealing with--his characters aren't just a generic group of college kids, and his story not one that could have taken place in any other age. His characters are individuals, but individuals who reflect their times--they are a specific group of today's youth, and Neihart has his finger on the pulse. Like any good writer who chronicles his times, he is not interested in what makes his characters universal, but in what makes them different than anyone who has come before them. They talk differently, they live differently, and they take things for granted that others wouldn't even have considered. The story invites you into a particular time and place with a group of attractive, sexy, amoral kids who will fascinate and seduce you, or leave you completely puzzled as to their charm if you can't accept and move past their nonchalance and shallow exterior.

The first part of the novel introduces the main characters in a familiar scenario: Drew, working-class student, is befriended and introduced to the world of wealth and privilege. We are as attracted as he is to Bahar and her brother Jake. By the time Drew starts to uncover a bizarre and brutal secret from Bahar and Jake's past we too experience the conflicting feelings of loyalty and repudiation Drew undergoes. The story is a surprisingly moral one which recognizes and reconciles with subtlety the true complexity of fascination and love.

A somewhat bizarre cross between House of Yes, Secret History and Less Than Zero, Burning Girl is a quick, enjoyable read which will leave you thrilled by Neihart's incredibly real prose--his turns of phrase and language is just off enough to be foreign and attractive and hip, yet familiar enough to remind you that everything matters, the shallow and the moral.

Rating:
Summary: Affected and tiring
Review: Drew, a college student, is taken in by his wealthy friend,Bahar, who introduces him to her brother, Jake, and encourages anaffair between the two. Despite his attraction for Jake, Drew becomes disturbed as he learns that Jake and his sister may have been party to the death of another girl when they were in high school. The more he investigates, the more Jake seems to want him to know about the brutal rape and stabbing. This novel bored me. The dialogue tried too hard to be hip, and while it might appeal to twentysomethings, I found it affected and tiring, soon to be dated. In addition, most of the novel occurs in dialogue, and the combination of that and the almost non-stop references to songs leads me to suspect this is a novel bent on trying to be sold someday as a screenplay. I can only hope it makes a better movie than a book, and that the characters are given more depth and their actions fuller explanation.

Rating:
Summary: Great idea, but with little exploration and depth . . .
Review: I guess I just didn't get it. I bought this book mostly because the premise intrigued me -- boy from the wrong side of the tracks (Drew) befriends the rich kids (Bahar and Jake), then finds out sordid details from their past. The basic storyline is a good one -- the details about the murder which may or may not have been committed by Jake, Bahar, et al. was the only thing that kept me turning the pages of this book. I was fascinated by that part -- the murder, what led up to it, who did it, what was going through everyone's heads, how it effects everyone after the fact, what really happened, why everyone covered it up . . . I mean, it was a storyline that really could have been probed and drawn out and explored. I almost think this could have made for a really interesting court room drama if taken in that direction. Instead, the author chooses to "probe" the depths of the homosexual relationship between Drew and Jake as well as the bizarre relationships between Drew and Bahar, Drew and the busboy at a restaurant, Drew and his friend Mary Hong . . . I don't know, I thought it was all a little unrealistic and too much to digest. The sex scenes were definitely overdone. Amazingly enough, I found the murder aspect to be realistic, but the characters themselves, and their actions, were NOT realistic! You'd think it would be the other way around -- that the far-fetched murder scheme would be laughable and ridiculous, when in fact it was the only aspect that kept me interested and was believable. The dialogue was embarrassingly unrealistic and laughable -- I mean, no one calls each other "honey" or "baby" that many times in one conversation! I found it utterly ridiculous. The references to pop culture were endearing, and may hold the interest of twentysomethings and teens who know the words to the songs that the author mentions, but I found it to be a little contrived. There is an obvious nod to the "Less Than Zero" genre, an attempt to create this sordid coming-of-age tale for the 90's, peppered with boozing, drug references, sexual exploitations, etc. I did not identify with any of the characters, nor did I sympathize with them. In fact, I began to feel some real dislike and disgust by the end of the book. Thankfully (! ) the book is only a couple hundred pages long -- but if anyone wants to read it, let me know . . . you can have my copy FOR FREE! Don't bother to purchase it!

Rating:
Summary: good like a trashy romance novel
Review: In BURNING GIRL, the Joe Keith character from Neihart's debut, HEY JOE, has evolved into Drew Burke, a 20-year-old New Orleans native on scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Because he's smart, charming and utterly guileless (despite a healthy dose of sweetly angsty self-doubt), Drew has an irresistible appeal to the spoiled-verging-on-decadent rich kids who set the tone of campus life.

While it's easy to understand how a stout-hearted but wide-eyed "white trash" boy from the boonies would be seduced by the chic material pleasures of Northeast preppie trappings, Neihart's niftiest trick here is to show how seduction runs in two directions: As Drew becomes entangled in the sordid sexual and criminal affairs of his cosmopolitan classmates, Neihart makes a subtle argument that salvation may tempt sinners even more strongly than sin tempts the innocent.

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Summary: Scary, Sexy, Crazy, Cool
Review: In equal parts I love and hate this book. I can't quite tell how serious the author is. Some parts, I swear, are so purple and breathless, but other, blacker, sadder parts caught me off guard, made me cry. The three main characters are shallow, Dawson Leery-like "kids" who don't talk at all like kids, but then again Peanuts never talked like real kids either.The murder mystery at the center reveals a strong, harsh, judgemental moral code. The settings are as gorgeously described as anything in Myst. I really tried to guess whodunnit and I failed.The sex scenes, boy-boy and boy-girl, were sort of overdone, yet I still was aroused. The violence in some scenes made me queasy and in other parts sort of made me laugh. I wished there had been more sex scenes with Jewel music because I really get crazy when I hear "Who Will Save Your Soul" while I'm in bed with my boyfriend.

Rating:
Summary: Looked so promising, but...
Review: This is a case of the trailer being far better than the movie. Sounds interesting and I'm even from the Baltimore area this book takes place in. While there are some interesting elements, the clunky dialogue made it almost impossible to finish. Every other paragraph you have to re-read to try and understand. Luckily, I stopped caring and gave up. Worst dialogue I've read in a looong while and I'm a dramatic writing freshman so I've seen a lot of bad dialogue.

Rating:
Summary: burning girl has no flames
Review: Thrillers are difficult to write. Mostly because their purpose is to incite extreme emotions in the reader such as fear and the desire to know what is going to happen next. Thrillers about murders are even harder to write. Mainly because the readers probably would not seriosly consider murdering someone in their life, and the killers motives would have to be interesting, plausible and bring meaning to the novel.
Ben Neihart's second novel struggled with all of those things which is why I am disappointed with it. The protagonist is Drew, who hangs out with a wealthy pair of siblings. He dates the brother, Jake, and the relationship to Jake's sister, Bahar, isn't an innocent one. He hangs out with them over a weekend where secrets come up, new things are discovered and his weekend of relaxation goes down the drain and turns into a survival game. Jake is forced to decide what is right versuses helping out Jake and Bahar.
I read the critically acclaimed "Hey Joe" about four days before I picked up "Burning Girl." Niehart's first novel focuses on Joe's nightly odyssey, and I fell in love with the lyrical language and relaxed nature of the piece. I didn't find any of that in "Burning Girl". The characters are too obssessed with fast cars, bed hopping and their own high social status in order to care about anything else. And the secret that comes up- well, let me just say that I didn't find it plausible that something as serious as that could simply be swept under the rug for such a long time. I don't think the revelation of the secret brought any meaning to the novel or to the character's lives. I just think it was a plot point to keep readers interested. The character development was weak, and made almost all of the characters look shallow with small ambitions. The thriller elements didn't do it for me either. I just wanted to novel to end. It seemed like a nightmare. Indeed, it was creepy, but not the right kind of creepy. Most thrillers are good when it's so creepy that you just want to lock your door and feel safe when you end it. This book was creepy in the way the characters manipulate each other and the situation, something which is not my cup of tea.
Don't get me wrong. I do like Niehart a lot, and I hope his next novel is better. I should have known that he was going to attempt to writer a thriller after looking at the counterplot in "Hey Joe" and I wonder, why? Niehart's gift is the ability to use language and words to create a dream-like, yet realistic existence for his characters and to use their five senses to describe the current state of their minds. It's like a movie, or a languid dream. His stories are so full of imagination and connection with characters that he does not need to throw a thriller affect in as a wild card to keep his readers interested. I think he should focus on character development, the reactions of the characters in realistic situations. That's when an audience is the most sympathetic. I know that's where my attention was, and where he won my admiration. But "Burning Girl" is not it.

Rating:
Summary: burning girl has no flames
Review: Thrillers are difficult to write. Mostly because their purpose is to incite extreme emotions in the reader such as fear and the desire to know what is going to happen next. Thrillers about murders are even harder to write. Mainly because the readers probably would not seriosly consider murdering someone in their life, and the killers motives would have to be interesting, plausible and bring meaning to the novel.
Ben Neihart's second novel struggled with all of those things which is why I am disappointed with it. The protagonist is Drew, who hangs out with a wealthy pair of siblings. He dates the brother, Jake, and the relationship to Jake's sister, Bahar, isn't an innocent one. He hangs out with them over a weekend where secrets come up, new things are discovered and his weekend of relaxation goes down the drain and turns into a survival game. Jake is forced to decide what is right versuses helping out Jake and Bahar.
I read the critically acclaimed "Hey Joe" about four days before I picked up "Burning Girl." Niehart's first novel focuses on Joe's nightly odyssey, and I fell in love with the lyrical language and relaxed nature of the piece. I didn't find any of that in "Burning Girl". The characters are too obssessed with fast cars, bed hopping and their own high social status in order to care about anything else. And the secret that comes up- well, let me just say that I didn't find it plausible that something as serious as that could simply be swept under the rug for such a long time. I don't think the revelation of the secret brought any meaning to the novel or to the character's lives. I just think it was a plot point to keep readers interested. The character development was weak, and made almost all of the characters look shallow with small ambitions. The thriller elements didn't do it for me either. I just wanted to novel to end. It seemed like a nightmare. Indeed, it was creepy, but not the right kind of creepy. Most thrillers are good when it's so creepy that you just want to lock your door and feel safe when you end it. This book was creepy in the way the characters manipulate each other and the situation, something which is not my cup of tea.
Don't get me wrong. I do like Niehart a lot, and I hope his next novel is better. I should have known that he was going to attempt to writer a thriller after looking at the counterplot in "Hey Joe" and I wonder, why? Niehart's gift is the ability to use language and words to create a dream-like, yet realistic existence for his characters and to use their five senses to describe the current state of their minds. It's like a movie, or a languid dream. His stories are so full of imagination and connection with characters that he does not need to throw a thriller affect in as a wild card to keep his readers interested. I think he should focus on character development, the reactions of the characters in realistic situations. That's when an audience is the most sympathetic. I know that's where my attention was, and where he won my admiration. But "Burning Girl" is not it.