Cracks by Sheila Kohler

[writing]

Title: Cracks
Author: Sheila Kohler
Pages: 176
Published: June 17th 2006 by Other Press
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Summary: A beautiful schoolgirl mysteriously disappears into the South African veld. Forty years later, thirteen members of the missing girl's swimming team gather at their old boarding school for a reunion, and look back to the long, dry weeks leading to Fiamma's disappearance. As teenage memories and emotions resurface, the women relive the horror of a long-buried secret. A stunning and singular tale of the passion and tribalism of adolescence, Cracks lays bare the violence that lurks in the heart of even the most innocent

MY REVIEW
Cracks is a coming of age story about a group of girls who live in a boarding school in Africa. They are all on the swim team, and queens of the school because of it. They stick to their crowd. When a new girl named Fiamma comes to school the attention the girls once received is now on her. Fiamma goes missing and the story of her disappearance begins to unfold.

This book was suggested to me by a friend to read, and I’m glad she did. While the beginning part of the story is rather slow, it does need to set up the story for the ending. I loved the characters, dialogue, and how the story as a whole was written.

Cracks is DEFINITELY not for everyone. It does deal with some tough issues with teens and while these issues do generally happen with adult male characters we get an interesting take of how these situations can happen with an adult female. I will advise if you can’t handle difficult situations, do not read the book. I would suggest the movie since it is toned down and a lot is taken out for that reason.

The only problem that I had, which I thankfully got over, was the author put herself as one of the girls. My friend pointed out that it was to tell the story from her point of view. I understood her view of why it was done, but sometimes that doesn’t always work. Thankfully in this case the author putting herself in the story worked and fit perfect with what was going on. Note: the story is a work of fiction and not a memoir. The author is just simply a character.