Serena - Ron Rash

I first heard about Serena via the movie with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. While I haven't yet gotten to see it--partly because it was apparently so poorly received that it skipped theaters entirely? Was it that bad--it did inspire me to pick up the original story that the movie was based on, by Ron Rash.

Now I don't know if this pair just really likes working together or what, but that aside, JLaw is a really odd casting choice in this for me. She always looks like she's kind of confused, or sad, or both, at any given time, and after getting to know Serena in this story I really expected her to look more coldly distantly beautiful. That said, I haven't seen her performance, so maybe she pulls it off just fine. Or maybe she doesn't, and that's why it tanked. I don't know.

Being the titular character, Serena is obviously who this story is really about. And I love her. She comes into my life at a time when I question our cultural insistence on women being likable and friendly and always accomodating, when I struggle with being authentic and standing up for my own rights. I've always been a kind of difficult person, and I pride myself on that, even when it creates difficulties in my life. Serena is raw in that way, but to a desperate extreme. She's an extremely hard, no-fucks-given I-get-mine kind of woman, and she will not tolerate disrespect of any kind, but especially that based on her gender. By all rights, you're not supposed to like her, but that's why I do. It's not often I get to see a real unlikeable female character that has such strength and drive, in a way that's more often attributed to male characters.

But naturally, Serena doesn't reach a balance in her life. Even as I admire her, I see how she will lead herself to disaster. Even given a drive for authenticity, I see the necessity of working within the confines of the culture one lives in. Serena and Pemberton run their logging camp with a hard hand, and as people pop up in their way, they kill or have them killed. They grow drunk on their own power and importance. Serena gets pregnant, miscarries--in part thanks to the buffoonery of the camp doctor--and tries to kill Pemberton's ex-lover Rachel in order to steal her child, but Rachel escapes to the West Coast with some money that Pemberton secretly has sent to her. Serena finds out, and ends up having Pemberton poisoned and left for dead as well. You don't cross Serena. The miscarriage is really like the turning point in her mental state: before it seemed she had a modicum of self restraint; after it was deaths galore. She trots off to Brazil to pursue her dream of chopping down all the Brazilian forests and becoming filthy, filthy rich.

Ultimately I think this story follows the traditional arc of the tragedy: everyone ends up sad and/or dead by the end of the book. The only people who got out in one piece is Rachel, and her illegitimate son by Pemberton. Serena gets the life she wants, sort of, but even that ends in murder.

Overall I found this story to be really enjoyable, in a dark, twisted emotional kind of way. Some of the characters maybe weren't as well-rounded as I would have liked (Rachel is very much the tormented angel, for example) and the use of loggers as a kind of chorus was an odd if interesting choice, but I enjoyed the general flow of the story.

Overall: 4 stars

Amazon: Serena

More reviews: Serena on Librarything (Average 3.71 stars)

Serena on Goodreads (Average 3.55 stars)