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See How Small by Scott Blackwood

Thriller

See How Small

by Scott Blackwood

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Quick take

The night after I finished reading See How Small, I was haunted by the book, my dreams a struggle to bring justice to the girls and peace to the ones they left behind. I woke up and read the book again.

Why I love it

"We have always lived here, though we pretend we've just arrived."—I was drawn into Scott Blackwood's novel See How Small by the very first sentence: A simple sentence but one that promises mystery, obfuscation, surprise. Three young women are brutally murdered in a small town, and the duplicity is everywhere, in all the lies told by those left behind. Blackwood's precise and crystalline prose gave me immediate and intense entry into a world that should have horrified me, but instead surrounded me willingly in its layers of grief, anger, denial, and survival.

Not only is the atmosphere of horror and aftermath so perfectly evoked by Blackwood's writing, but so also is the atmosphere of the landscapes: the ice cream shop where the girls are killed; the small Texas town where they lived; the cold blight of winter in Chicago, sought out by one of the criminals in a final bid for absolution. Each character has his or her own atmosphere as well: smell of perfume, curve of ear or thigh, slap of flip-flops, or long braid down the back.

Every player in the tragedy is given a voice, including the three girls. The created symphony of disintegration—lives falling apart—and realignment—lives coming together again — is fiercely sad but also beautiful and moving. We are all struggling to make sense of life. A firefighter looks to the victims for guidance; a reporter synthesizes all the different stories she has covered to find meaning; a perpetrator agonizes over his responsibility.

The night after I finished reading See How Small, I was haunted by the book, my dreams a struggle to bring justice to the girls and peace to the ones they left behind. I woke up and read the book again, and found in my second reading, hints of reparation and resilience that I had not seen before. I joined in the characters' universal quest—how to live in a world that is often cruel and hard—and understood how it can be done. A lesson in survival, beautifully delivered.

Member ratings (15)

Thriller
The Boyfriend
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Listen for the Lie
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Things We Do in the Dark
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The Stranger Upstairs
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A Flicker in the Dark
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The Last Thing He Told Me
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The Paris Apartment
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The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless
Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless