Security by Gina Wohlsdorf
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I received an advance reader copy from NetGalley for this title and was really excited about it, since the blurb compared it to “A Visit from the Goon Squad.”
I don’t know if it was the copy I received, but the formatting was all off. Sure, there was the quirky way the book was narrated, flipping from story to story the way a security camera might, but there were also glaring incongruences like sentences finishing with the ending of lines a few lines down so you get sentences like this:
“The Killer puts Delores is apologizing to Tessa — this is
Delores’s favored greeting to Tessa– before the main elevator’s doors have fully opened.”
Or this one:
“The Thinker solitaire, and the Killer is — again — sitting on the is — still– playing
bed in Room 717.”
Even the acknowledgements get squeezed to resemble some sort of William Carlos Williams homage.
So I don’t think that was the intention, but I think it contributed to me feeling less than charitable towards the book.
We follow (ostensibly through the security cameras) Tessa and other hotel workers as they shuttle up and down the slow-moving elevator (past the distinct lack of a thirteenth floor, we’re told again and again and again), up and down the stairs, and begin preparations for the big grand opening. By the end of the book I felt like if I were ever to forget what it would be like to walk up and down 15-20 floors of a hotel and maybe take the elevator, too, to relieve the monotony, I could re-read this book and be 100% satisfied.
The story line in which a Killer (or Killers) is killing everyone in the hotel is a little bit suspenseful, but it’s paired with an odd, flatly described burgeoning romance between two foster siblings that I just didn’t get. Perhaps that was the point, because of who the narrator was, but it made for very dull, labored reading (“Her hips move like a clock’s third hand.”). For example:
“Her eyes were depthless when she stared past a straining neck, palmed a contorting shoulder blade, ran another hand down perfect vertebrae to a strong ass, and cupped. Stared at the ceiling, where she was seeing someone she wished were with her instead.”
It feels like a second-by-second blow. I get that maybe this was a deliberate choice based on the way the book was narrated, but it just didn’t work for me.