Upon reading the inlay for You’re A Big Girl Now I was immediately hooked. It has a lot of the stuff I am interested in: politics, privacy, human rights, journalism. I was not disappointed. It grabs you from the start and I also feel like Neil Gordon really knows his stuff. As he should of course, this is his fourth novel and he is also Professor of Writing at The New School and Professor of Comparative Literature and Dean of The American University in Paris. Add in that he is the literary editor at the Boston Review and you have a man who knows a lot about writing. This certainly comes across in his novel.
This novel is a sequel but I only realised that after reading the blurb on the Pan Macmillan website. Despite this, you can read this book as a standalone novel and still understand and enjoy it.
It is a gripping thriller that holds you. It has plenty of twists and turns. The main character, Isabel Montgomery, is not necessarily a likeable person. She is over-privileged but she knows it, gets work because of her family name but knows it, is a drug addict and a flake, but she knows it. I didn’t know if I liked her but the fact is, Isabel Montgomery certainly would not care whether or not I liked her. There is an echo of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo here. I must admit that sometimes I struggled with her character. I don’t know why female characters have to be so broken sometimes. The drug use annoyed me and I couldn’t relate to it. She is in her late-twenties and is still blaming her family for her problems, all whilst making a living trading off their name.
But she has her good points. She is an excellent writer, ballsy, opinionated. If it wasn’t for the drug use and the alcoholism she could actually be a heroine. She just lets her demons overcome her, not realising that many people have had a much worse life then she has.
The book is excellent, relevant and tells an important story about surveillance and politics. It is an enjoyable and educating read, even if Isabel annoys you sometimes.
A contemporary literary thriller, You’re A Big Girl Now is the gripping sequel to The Company You Keep, recently adapted into a major film directed by and starring Robert Redford, alongside Shia LeBoeuf and Susan Sarandon.
In 1995, Isabel Montgomery was abandoned by her father in a downtown Manhattan hotel room, and the world of her childhood fell apart. After years undercover, he was exposed as one of America’s most wanted fugitives, for his role in violent anti-Vietnam protests.
In 2011, Isabel is a twenty-seven-year-old star reporter – despite a bad attitude and a substance-abuse problem – and she’s about to put her career on the line by writing a New York Times front-page story on the Obama administration’s unconstitutional surveillance of its citizens.
Forced into hiding after the story breaks, she takes refuge in her grandparents’ abandoned home. There, surrounded by the past she’s run from for years, she makes a discovery that sees her turn her investigative skills on her own family to finally understand the truth about everything that led her to this moment.
You’re A Big Girl Now is a gripping, intelligent thriller that questions the morals and politics of America in the contemporary Age of Surveillance.
You’re a Big Girl Now is available here.
