The Girl at the Door takes us to a mythical country called Miden. Miden is supposedly a place like Eden, or Camelot, where life is good. There is a basic standard of living that every citizen has. There is medical care and maternity leave. The country is run by Commissions that make the decisions affecting the citizens. If you aren’t born in Miden, you must apply to visit and to live there. Applications are carefully reviewed before granting anyone access. And if you break the rules, the punishment might find you moving back where you came from.

The novel is told from two points of view, his and hers, and that’s all we know about the two main characters. They are partners, and she is pregnant with his child. He works at the Academy, as a professor of philosophy. One day a girl appears at their door when he is at work. She states that she must talk to the girlfriend (her) about the boyfriend (him.) The girl had an affair with Him before he met Her. She no longer considers it an affair, she feels she was pressured into having sex with him. He is being charged with rape. This is how the story begins.

This novel was originally published in Italian. Not sure if it was the translation, but it was very stilted. The dialogue, the flow, felt very choppy to me. The switch from Her to Him sometimes was odd. The land of Miden was never fully explained, only hints here and there of the world having a huge crash. There were times that I felt very confused by the book. I just held onto the Him and Her part of the story to keep track. I didn’t love this book, and at times I simply wanted to quit. The end was pretty good, so I’m glad I finished it.

3 stars on Goodreads


This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com close to publication date.

This provocative fable challenges the culture of political correctness: On a utopian, no wait, dystopian island named Miden, people live the Miden Dream of hardcore mindfulness and moderation. Society is organized by commisions, and everyone has to participate in this system that sets up and controls the rules - it's no coincidence that in this tale, no one has a name. One day, "the girl" (who, more accurately, is a young university student) knocks at the door of a philosophy professor's pregnant girlfriend and tells her that two years ago, the prof has raped her, but that back then, she did not realize that she was subjected to violence. While it remains undispted that the two had an affair, the unsettling aspect of the story is that it never becomes clear whether the prof was abusing his position or whether he even raped the student (we also don't know whether the girl was a minor).

Thus starts a process of questioning and peer-reviewing the prof and his girlfriend, both of them immigrants from an unknown place in financial turmoil where people eat spaghetti (author Veronica Raimo is Italian) - and the dissection of their characters goes far beyond the issue at hand. Are they worthy of living in Miden, or will they be thrown out? Alternating between the viewpoints of the prof and his girlfriend, we witness them grappling with different memories and positions, with their fear and humiliation, and while the prof certainly makes numerous questionable remarks, the way the society depicted handles the case is also disturbing: There is no difference between fact and emotion, there is no room for nuance, and as the story moves along, the egalitarian society appears more and more alienating.

So the premise of the book is certainly daring and smart, but Raimo tends to overburden her tale with too many unconnected details about Miden that pile up until the story tumbles: The last third is just too convoluted. Still, this is a young writer to watch, because she dares to ask some uncomfortable questions and examines the ambiguous, shifting nature of human relationships.

I thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. This author was new to me and I was not let down. It was a great story and very well written. The characters were easy to relate to and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend this to everyone!!

Given that none of the characters have names...( yet it was easy to distinguish who was speaking at any given time).
The *HE SAID/SHE SAID* crafting....can be viewed literally and figuratively.

I’ll refer to the characters as they were in the novel: ( you might have to forgive my English...and think of HE - SHE - and GIRL as proper names)....the way I’ll use them.

The main characters are HE and SHE .....and GIRL ....with QUESTIONNAIRES from the community.
HE and SHE....as alternating narrators each had their own particular way of looking at their given situation. I found them both equally interesting. They didn’t always have opposing views. SHE never felt ‘terribly’ upset if HE raped GIRL.
Rather.... SHE actually wanted to experience the feelings of being raped. (in role playing). HE thought SHE was an idiot to even consider things she suggested.

The story begins when HER was six months pregnant. GIRL comes to visit HER.
GIRL asked if HER was the professors wife.
No, HER is HE’S girlfriend....rather partner.
GIRL came to talk about the past....to tell HER that her boyfriend/Philosophy professor raped her two years ago. She brought a letter from the Commission - an accusation of sexual assault. In the letter they didn’t use the word rapist....rather HE was accused of being a perpetrator who committed violence.

GIRL had an affair with the professor which HE doesn’t deny. But rape? HE denied raping GIRL.

HER feels jealous of GIRL’s skinniness ....

HER and HE were emigrants from another ( presumably poor ) country. They moved to Miden because they wanted to be free.....and escape ‘The Crash’.

Miden was a country that emerged from the deep water with a splendor of a Venus.
The Commissions worked in a small community and Miden was a small community.
“Mediators were part of one of the most important Commissions in Miden. They were subjected to monitoring psychological stress tests in which they had to demonstrate their objectivity - even in the most controversial situations”.
What was often considered controversy was simply life.
“They had a maieutic approach, trying to draw out the most obscure reasons for an estrangement or squabble between two individuals.
They tried to draw out from the black vortex of conscience the tranquil star of common sense.
They intervened in family relations, in relationships between couples, in quarrels among friends, in cultural misunderstandings”.

WORDS FROM GIRL’S FATHER: > speaking to HE:
“Miden has been a haven for many, for others an escape, but for those like myself, who created it, Miden is an act of faith. It means believing in humanity. You must have taken an oath, sworn allegiance to the Miden Dream yourself”.

In Miden people must apply - learn what’s expected of them - and agree to The culture of the community before accepted as a permanent resident.

They don’t have any martyrs with sad faces - people who look to the future with dead-looking faces - in Miden. They want people to be happy.

“Every product that is sold in Miden has a label that explains the origin, the process, and the amount of water consumed, and income distribution in the production chain of those who have come into contact with it”.

It’s not easy trying to write a review for this book ....but I couldn’t put it down.....I was always interested to know where this story was going.

There was an end-of-the year exhibit at the Academy. Half of the work was an obsessive repetition of the nude body in almost any form. There were bizarre and disturbing photos of girls seeking out death in their work. It was part of an artistic project called PLAY and CONTROL.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the project - PLAY and CONTROL was also a similar- acting out - sexual role playing - between the professor and GIRL. ( and not rape)...
“The GIRL didn’t seem the least bit interested in HER boyfriend. It wasn’t a form of revenge for her as a betrayal, disappointed, or frustrated lover. There were no such feminine subtleties. It was all a matter of fact”.

I understand this book won’t be for everyone .... but I found the book to be thought-provoking.
I felt the author scrutinized with a sharp eye — allowing us to see many sides of the accusation. I found it feral, raw, unflinching ....leaving me still wondering about the book’s ending.

Thank You Netgalley, Grove Atlantic, and Veronica Raimo.

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC. This was, for lack of a better word, weird. Miden is some sort of commune or post apocalyptic society but what it is, is never made clear. The characters don't have names. Where they are from is unclear. Most of the proceedings are very unclear, and mostly I just didn't care.

I'm sorry, but I just cannot get into this book. I'm at about 45% and find I really don't care about any of the characters enough to bother finishing it.
Miden is a future commune like place where everyone has to go through an acceptance process before being allowed to join. That comes up as one of the members, known as Him, has been accused by "the girl" of inappropriate sexual behavior. This behavior is related to His partner, known as Her, who is pregnant and wants to believe Him, but can tell in her heart that the girl is truthful.
Should he be charged and found guilty, he will be excluded from Miden forever. What about Her? The girl? What happens to them?
Thanks NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Girl at the Door was an interesting book. It's very much on-point with current topics and the Me Too movement, and one thing I did like was the ambiguity. In the end, we cannot be 100% sure whose narrative is true, perhaps because all the characters view the events from their own perspective and therefore see things differently. One thing I did find a little strange was the excessive distancing. With the semi-fantasy setting and the fact that not a single character was ever named, it became an Everyman tale, saying this could happen to anyone, anywhere. However, the downside of that was that it made it hard to connect with and care about the characters. It stopped me from fully investing in the story, because I felt so far removed from it all. Overall, I am giving this book three stars. It was certainly an interesting idea, and there was plenty I enjoyed, but certain aspects of the storytelling didn't quite work for me.

Yet another book that I wanted to like, but didn't. That feels like a trend lately - maybe I need to be more picky about the books I choose.

I didn't like any of the characters, I didn't like the story, I didn't like the writing.... well, you get the point.

That being said, it's not a bad book, and I am sure that there are people that will like it. It's just not my style.

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
In <u>The Girl at the Door</u>, a young girl approaches the narrator (we only know the narrator as "Her"). Over cups of tea, the young girl accuses the narrator's lover - who was her professor - of having raped her over a long period of time during their "relationship". When asked by the narrator ("Her") why the young girl never reported the rapes, the girl confesses that she wasn't aware at the time that she WAS being raped.

The female narrator then reflects back on her own relationship with "Him" (the accused professor), whom she met while on vacation in Miden. You come to suspect that Miden is some type of commune or refuge and that the rest of the world is "dying of repression." The female narrator states that this decay is the result of people not act on their emotions or desires - due to excessive fear or caution.

The male perpetrator/accused is also a co-narrator and he spews all types of stereotypical descriptions and beliefs about these two women in his life, and women in general Of course, those passages are very disturbing because his version is that his relationship with his young student is purely consensual, but the author hints that this is not in fact the case.

This "me too" novel attempts to portray the points of view of the perpetrator and his various victims in this particular scenario in a very impersonal way: the narrators are never named. Like many books where the narrators deliver information in endless, monotonous paragraphs, the story becomes more of a biography than an actual event, and it loses its realism. The book's concept was intriguing at first, but the interior monologues made me tune out more than once.

In the end, the writing style was too impersonal, the characters did not seem at all real to me, and the ending was predictable. I give this a 3.5 out of 5.

A different style than most I read, It did have its good points. It had a setting that was interesting and I would like to hear more about. It also had a very satisfying ending. All in all it wasn't my favorite but worth the read.