Burn Our Bodies Down

Burn Our Bodies Down just didn’t do it for me. Following along with this story was not the best. I didn’t like any of the characters, especially not the main character. This is a mystery as Margot tries to find out her mother’s and families secrets, but I was not invested. Things just got more weird in a way that didn’t intrigue me. I’ll just say this one was not for me.

I have read Wilder Girls by Rory Power and really enjoyed it but this book was soo much better. I loved Margot, the mystery, the creepiness, and the rawness of this story. Margot grew up with her mother who never told her anything about her relatives even though Margot is very interested in her family’s past. When she find s a picture and phone number for her grandma she jumps at the opportunity to meet her and runs away to Phalene which is where her grandmother lives. Everyone in Phalene knows which family she belongs to as soon as she arrives because she looks like the carbon copy of her mother and grandmother. When she learns of one of the grandmother’s fields burning as soon as she arrives she goes and tries to rescue a girl that could be her twin. Only her grandmother claims to not know her and Margot has never met her. Margot must find out her family’s secrets and find out why her mother left and never wanted to come back.

I really enjoyed the internal struggle that Margot went through and hearing her thoughts on everything. I loved the touchy and controversial subjects that Rory Power brought up including emotional abuse, psychological abuse, the use of pesticides and the aftereffects, and abortion.

I was a huge fan of Rory Power’s first novel, Wilder Girls, so maybe I had some really high expectations of this going in. The description made it seem like this book was exactly the kind of thing I look for: a focus on family, a complicated relationship between mother and daughter, and a stubborn and headstrong main character. And, to an extent, I did get all of those things, but this book was a perfect example of how something perfect on paper can disappoint you in real life.

Burn Our Bodies Down centers Margot, a teenager who has lived her entire life in a small town with only her mother for company. The small town is boring, but more importantly, Margot’s mother isn’t cut out to be a mother, relying on Margot to keep their lives together and having a fixed obsession with always having a fire going, all the while tormenting Margot by not revealing any information about her past or her family. It’s just Margot and her mom. Until Margot discovers a phone number hidden away in her mother’s things and finally is able to contact her grandmother, who lives close-by in a town called Phalene. Margot runs to her grandmother, only to immediately see the family farm catch fire and reveal a dead body that looks suspiciously like Margot. What Margot had imagined as a happy family reunion is anything but, with her grandmother turning out to be just as secretive and stern as her mother. It turns out the Nielsen family has a suspicious reputation in Phalene, and it might be well-deserved.

What Burn Our Bodies Down did well was the character relationships. Relationships and characterization tend to be the two things to draw me into a novel and Margot’s family life did very much keep me engaged. I found them so realistic; Margot’s mother is not heinously abusive yet still very much a bad mother, trapping Margot in a cycle of abuse she inherited from her own mother. She buys the wrong groceries, she thinks only of herself, she drives Margot into cyclical and gaslighting arguments to make herself look better. Yet Margot still loves her. I found this to be a true and honest family relationship with all the trappings of what it’s like to grow up in a family that’s reluctant to discuss its problems. Margot’s mother opens the novel with a fascinating rule: when at home, Margot must always keep a fire going. Her oddities and mysteries are what drive the novel forward and what kept me engaged in the first few otherwise slow chapters. Margot has a similar relationship to her grandmother, who ends up being more similar to her mother than she ever expected. Crueler, even. Characters who hide their monstrosity behind a nice smile are favorite archetypes of mine, and Margot’s grandmother is so thrilling to watch.

Unfortunately, even my love for great characterization couldn’t save Burn Our Bodies Down from a plot that stutters and falters before lurching to a quick and hurried conclusion. The pacing is slow, not necessarily a bad thing, but then runs to catch up all at once, resulting in me feeling like the entire book’s plot was shoehorned into the last few chapters of the novel. We spend the entire book with Margot teasing information out of her grandmother in pieces, trying to discover who the dead body was found in her family’s farm, and what exactly happened in Phalene so long ago that caused her mother to flee. These are all interesting plots. That was the worst part; I was actually really invested in these threads and didn’t mind the slower pacing at all, even though there were parts that I could’ve done without. I would’ve been willing to wait for a gradual buildup and great payoff. Instead, what happened was a novel of mystery solved by an errant comment from a side character and then an exposition dump. And then the novel ends. What I had thought was a mystery that was going to be unraveled with a stunning climax instead got solved by someone other than our main character and then we have the mystery explained to us like children. It was a conclusion of whiplash, from a slowburn to a chapter of action and then an unearned ending. Most of me likes Power’s dedication to writing standalone, shorter novels, but in this case I felt like the novel needed to be an extra hundred pages to deliver us the satisfying conclusion we should’ve gotten. Not a whole plot crammed and explained in just a chapter.

I won’t spoil it, but again, the explanation and mystery are satisfying. It was a good twist. I didn’t have a problem with the actual solution and reveal, I had a problem with the wildly inconsistent pacing and the way the solution was presented. I could see this novel being so much better had it just been a little longer and allowed things to happen more naturally.

Burn Our Bodies Down was a bit of a disappointment. I don’t want to advertise it as a bad book, because I did find it intriguing. I was pleased with it until the ending crashed and burned, and there’s nothing that’ll leave a bad taste in my mouth like a disappointing conclusion. It still has that classic Power stylings that I like: complicated relationships, moving and lyrical prose, and wholly original science fiction concepts. The pacing just failed so badly it was jarring. Still, it’s a worthwhile read if you’re still chasing the Wilder Girls high, and short enough that I would never call it a waste of time.

TW/CW: body horror, nonconsensual pregnancy, child abuse.

review blog

I think the magic of this book is that the horror comes as a sneak attack. Everything seems as fine as it’s able for Margot. Her mother is distant, emotionally abuse, and she raises herself. But she wants a family, she wants to know where she came from. Then as she finds the freedom she’s longed for, in the bosom of her grandmother, the mystery unfolds. Things take a turn and the fantastical elements that we were expecting seep to the surface.

Margot is an abused teen. The mind games her mother plays are just unbelievable. And Margot, in typical abused kid fashion, has learned how to navigate the minefield of her mother’s psychological warfare. But it’s not enough for Margot, who knows there is a life out there waiting for her. Perhaps a family that has always wanted her, a place she can truly call home. Then you start to get a bad feeling, but it’s only slight, so you put that in the back of your mind, and continue reading, hopeful that your gut feeling is wrong…

The thing is, Margot is experiencing signs from her grandmother: the grip on the shoulders, the anger, and she just brushes them off. Why? Because for 17 years she’s lived abuse, and the power of family is stronger for her right now.

“But it’s not love, to give your wounds to someone else.”

The characters played their roles perfectly. Even Margot’s impossible mother Jo was a good, wretched woman. This was a fun read from start to finish. I loved the farm setting, which made it perfectly creepy even if there wasn’t horror lurking around the corner. The creep factor made this book stand out for me. I was expecting it, but then bam, I wasn’t expecting *that*. A well-written and unnerving read. So much fun! Thank you, Random House Children’s/Delacorte Press, for sending this along.