August Fast Read for BOTM BUDDY READ
Sometimes it all goes horribly wrong. Like this book. What a hot mess. The fact that I carved out questions for discussions is a miracle! HA. The BOTM website had such a glowing review, and we know better, but we gave this book a shot anyway! Thankfully we only did a two week read as it was short. Several brave souls finished it along with me and we did as usual enjoy a lovely discussion, however, the book was a total flop.
See How Small by Scott Blackwood.
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A riveting novel about the aftermath of a brutal murder of three teenage girls, written in incantatory prose “that’s as fine as any being written by an American author today.” (Ben Fountain) One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. SEE HOW SMALL tells the stories of the survivors–family, witnesses, and suspects–who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous. Hovering above the aftermath of their deaths are the three girls. They watch over the town and make occasional visitations, trying to connect with and prod to life those they left behind. “See how small a thing it is that keeps us apart,” they say. A master of compression and lyrical precision, Scott Blackwood has surpassed himself with this haunting, beautiful, and enormously powerful new novel.
BOOK inspired by: The plot of Scott Blackwood’s novel See How Small will sound familiar to anyone who’s spent much time in central Texas: It’s inspired by the Austin yogurt shop murders, an unsolved case from 1991. Four men were arrested and two convicted in that case, although both guilty verdicts were later overturned. The strip mall where the murders occurred still stands; there’s a small plaque outside with the victims’ names.
It is difficult — probably impossible — to make any sense of the slayings. And it has to be tough to find art in the aftermath of crimes that still shock and haunt the city of Austin.
The 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders
is an open homicide case. On Friday, December 6, 1991, the yogurt dessert shop was robbed and set afire, subsequent to the four teenage girls inside being murdered. The bodies of 13-year-old Amy Ayers (sometimes spelled Ayres) and 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, as well as 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison and her 15-year-old sister Sarah, were discovered after the fire was extinguished.
Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas were employees of the store; they were working the evening shift. Jennifer’s sister Sarah and her friend Amy Ayers had spent the earlier part of the evening at nearby Northcross Mall, and were looking forward to a sleepover planned for that night. They were in the shop to help Jennifer close it down, and to get a ride home with her afterward.
The original investigation spanned nearly eight years. Two men who initially confessed to the quadruple slaying were thereupon tried and convicted; however, they were released from custody years later, in 2009, for lack of evidence. No new charges have been filed, and local media coverage remains ongoing.
We decided that we all would have been better off reading a nonfiction book about these murders. For now we are saddened that precious girls have never had justice for their deaths, along with so many other unsolved murders of young women, and if this book sheds light on them and the plight for their killers to be found, then it’s worth reading this book and also so that we all remember them.
Peace.
