In a perpetually foggy northern American town, a school is plagued by a mysterious illness that sees its teenage girls fall down, froth at the mouth, and undergo convulsions and seizures. It would sound like your standard YA horror lite, or like someone should be accusing Goody Proctor of speaking with the devil, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s based on actual events that took place in a town in New York state only a year or two ago. (I’m also not sure whether it’s supposed to be YA or not; if so, it’s a bit more nuanced than I recall my teen novels being.)
After the first couple of girls fall victim, the usual outcry starts to build, focussed now on the Gardasil vaccinations that have been administered at the school, now on the toxic lake nearby (I mentioned nuance before; obviously, a fluorescent lake littered with the cast-off garments of teenage girls is a little more glaring). The undercurrent prevalent in the community, unsurprisingly, is one of unease at the emerging sexuality of the afflicted girls. The main characters are Deenie, who is friends with some of the victims but seems mysteriously untouched by the illness, and who (coincidentally?) (yes) lost her virginity on the eve of the outbreak; her brother, Eli, star of the school’s ice hockey team; and her father, Tom, a teacher at the school. All of them are negotiating adolescence in one way or another (Tom through attempting to parent it), with varying degrees of success.
I liked this novel; I liked its – well – feverish tone, its witchiness, its edge of hysteria. I liked the sense of children trying to protect themselves in a web of adult fear and judgment, which captured the mood of adolescence pretty well. Surprisingly, it turns into basically a detective story in the end, and has a satisfying conclusion that evidently mirrors that arrived at in the real-life case.
By the way, if you’re interested in this and want to read a properly researched and well-informed review of this and another book on the same subject, I really enjoyed this one (spoiler warning, though).