The Girl in the Well is Me
Karen Rivers
Algonquin Young Readers
Fiction, MG Suspense
Themes: Country Tales
****
Description
Eleven-year-old Kammie had hoped that starting in a new school, albeit one in the geographic middle of nowhere, Texas, would be a chance to start over. She could use that, after everything went so very wrong with her life at her old home - after the police took her father away, after the trial, after the bank took everything that wasn't nailed down, after her best friend stopped talking to her even. But her plans to join in with the popular girls fell through... literally. During her initiation into their club (it was a real club, right, and not just a joke on the new kid?), she fell down an abandoned well and got stuck. As she waits for a rescue she's not even sure is coming, Kammie's mind drifts back over the events that brought her where she is, and what will have to change when - or if - she ever gets out of this cold, dark place...
Review
Like other stories where people must face internal disasters by being stuck in external ones, The Girl in the Well is Me turns Kammie's greater life predicament into a metaphor made literal, having her stuck and sliding down a deep dark hole where nobody can reach her. Her tale unfolds in a stream of consciousness narrative, drifting into waking dreams that weave in fragments of stray thoughts and various incidents in her past. Along the way, she must come to terms with what has gone wrong, and how terribly complicated life can be, with no guarantees of happiness even when you're doing your best. She also learns that the deepest well in the world isn't far enough to fall to get away from herself, so she either needs to learn to live with who she is - the good and the bad - or... not. (There is some talk of self-harm and depression, and the catharsis of well-used curses.) The ending feels a little bit drawn out, but all in all it's a decent, occasionally trippy journey through a girl's mental and physical crisis.