Title: Savage Girl Author: Jean Zimmerman
Published: March 6, 2014
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 402
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Jean Zimmerman’s new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society.
Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Wharton era Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl’s illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.
Zimmerman’s tale is narrated by the Delegate’s son, a Harvard anatomy student. The tormented, self-dramatizing Hugo Delegate speaks from a prison cell where he is prepared to take the fall for his beloved Savage Girl. This narrative—a love story and a mystery with a powerful sense of fable—is his confession.
As interesting as the topic of feral children might be (I admit, very interesting), it’s also true that a book requires more than just a unique premise. Savage Girl promises to be quite different from the majority of historical fiction, and it is, but the book also seems to lack in other important areas. Overall, I felt that Jean Zimmerman’s story could use quite a bit of work.
The year is 1875. Teddy Roosevelt is a student at Harvard, and the fashionable elite of New York eat dinner at Delmonico’s and watch the Statue of Liberty go up piece by piece. Our narrator is Hugo Delegate, a son of privilege and fortune. His rather progressive parents think of themselves as social scientists, and have an extreme interest in feral children. When they find one in a Nevada mining town, the family adopts her and brings her back to New York, hoping to achieve an Eliza Doolittle-esque transformation. Meanwhile, Hugo is smitten with the girl, even as it seems that she’s on a vicious killing spree.
There are several problems with Hugo’s narration in Savage Girl. The first problem is that he’s telling the story after the fact, and the reader is constantly reminded of it. The book has a very “sit down and let me tell you my life story” kind of vibe, which adds distance and a distinct feeling of telling to things. The second problem with the narration is the simple fact that Hugo is a complete ass. He’s condescending, self-absorbed, proud, closed-minded, and rude. At no point in this story did I feel interested in him or his problems, since his attitude throughout the book was annoying, boring, and had me wanting to shut him up by any means possible.
The “Savage Girl” herself, Bronwyn, was somewhat difficult to connect with as well. Our impression of Bronwyn is always seen through the filter of Hugo’s perspective, which as I discussed, isn’t usually a pleasant viewpoint to experience. I think Zimmerman did an excellent job of characterizing what it would be like for her, as an “uncultured” young woman in Gilded Age NYC, with all its rules and mores. At the same time, Savage Girl presents Bronwyn as an extreme Mary Sue, possibly because we’re looking at her through Hugo’s eyes, which are one-part infatuated and one-part derisive. It’s an interesting way to look at this kind of character—or any character, for that matter.
I do think, however, that Jean Zimmerman did a nice job of capturing the feel and atmosphere of New York at this time period. We looked at this world of extreme privilege through the eyes of someone very much accustomed to it, but who at the same time was jaded by the hypocrisy he saw. As glamorous as the time period was, it was also corrupt and full of issues. The fact that Hugo’s parents are progressives and that he associates occasionally with muckrakers and their sort adds to the disillusioning deconstruction of the era. The fact that Savage Girl presents even “good” people (i.e. abolitionists) as extreme hypocrites adds to the false beauty of the book’s setting.
Zimmerman’s writing isn’t great here, to my mind. Her prose definitely gets the job done, but it’s somewhat stiff, and never invited me to become an active participant of the story or characters’ lives. This might have something to do with the distance we feel from events, do to the way Hugo’s “telling” his story. Even so, I do think that this isn’t really the style or type of writing that gets me excited or stands out as worthwhile.
All in all, Savage Girl was an okay book. It’s a historical novel with an intriguing premise but somewhat disappointing delivery. I can’t fault Zimmerman’s research or ideas, but I question her characters and some of her techniques. On the other hand, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever find another book about a feral-child-cum-debutante, so hats off for novelty of topic.
