Summary: Written with the riveting storytelling of authors like Emma Donoghue, Adam Johnson, Ann Patchett, and Curtis Sittenfeld, Cartwheel is
a suspenseful and haunting novel of an American foreign exchange
student arrested for murder, and a father trying to hold his family
together. When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires
for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters:
the colorful buildings, the street food, the handsome, elusive man next
door. Her studious roommate Katy is a bit of a bore, but Lily didn’t
come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans. Five
weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and
Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s
asking. As the case takes shape—revealing deceptions, secrets, and
suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through
the eyes of those around her: the media, her family, the man who loves
her and the man who seeks her conviction. With mordant wit and keen
emotional insight, Cartwheel offers a prismatic investigation of the ways we decide what to see—and to believe—in one another and ourselves. In Cartwheel,
duBois delivers a novel of propulsive psychological suspense and rare
moral nuance. No two readers will agree who Lily is and what happened to
her roommate. Cartwheel will keep you guessing until the final page, and its questions about how well we really know ourselves will linger well beyond. ~powells.comReview: After Cartwheel was getting a lot of buzz on a bunch of websites and blogs, I thought it was right up my alley. I happen to love crime stories and find them even more fascinating when they are based on a real story. I knew a little about the Amanda Knox trial but wasn't absorbed by it. Cartwheel would have been a fantastic novel if there was one ounce of emotion in it. I don't have to like the characters but I have to feel something towards them. I didn't. I still don't. I actually don't care if Lily killed Katy or not. It all seemed very clinical. I felt like I was reading a case study or depositions of a case.
I'm disappointed in this novel because I expected more. I wanted to delve in and really understand what made these characters tick and I didn't get that. Maybe that's some of the point though, do we really ever know the people we are closest to? Do we know what makes them tick? Do we know how they would be perceived as by others? Because that is the point. In today's society people are put on trial through social media before they even see a courtroom. Does someone really have a chance of proving themselves innocent when they've already been convicted by society?
Final Take: 2/5
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