Boekverslag Nicci French

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Geschreven door:	anoniem
Datum ingestuurd:	17 maart 2005
Niveau:	4 havo
Taal:
Woorden:	717
Opvragingen:	2744 (36 deze maand)
Waardering:	Currently 3.60/5 1 2 3 4 5 3.6/5 (5 stemmen)

Titel:	Killing me softly
	Bezeten van mij
Auteur:	Nicci French,
Jaar van uitgave:	1999

Auteur:	Nicci French,
Nationaliteit:	Engels
Informatie:	Duo van schrijvers: Nicci Gerrard en Sean French.
Populaire titels:	2000Beneath the skin / Onderhuids (13) 1999Killing me softly / Bezeten van mij (6) 1998The safe house / Het veilige huis (5) 2001The red room / De rode kamer (4) 2003Verlies (7) 2002Land of the living / De bewoonde wereld (5) 1997Het geheugenspel / The memory game (4) 2003The secret smile / De verborgen glimlach (2) 2006Losing you / Verloren (3) 2003Things we knew were true / De onderstroom (1) 2005Catch me when I fall / Vang me als ik val (2) 2003The people who went away / De mensen die weggingen (0) ... meer

1. Killing me softly
2. Killing me softly
3. Killing me softly
4. Killing me softly
5. Killing me softly
6. Killing me softly

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a. Analyses
1. Author; Nicci French Title: Killing me softly
2. May 1999, London
3. 10th edition, number of pages: 319
4. Genre: literary thriller
5. The story takes place in modern London, there are a few small flashbacks, when Alice thinks back of how her life used to be.
6. London
7. Alice: Alice has a very orderly life. An husband, a house and a good job. She thinks she is happy until she meets Adam. Adam changes her whole life. Although she knows better she gives up her whole life to be with this adventurous man. Their relation is really passionate. Everything seems perfect until she starts finding out things. Her curiosity is becoming an obsession that bring everything in danger: her marriage, her safety, her health and finally her life.

Adam: Adam is a very good mountaineer and the hero of a recent, disastrous Himalaya-expedition. He’s not a man of many words. the further you read, the more doubt you get in this man who seems so trustworthy in the beginning.
Adam has to face the problem that his wife is digging in his past, which is terrible.

8. I think the message in this book is that you should not rush decisions. Alice leaves a good life for passion. which becomes fatal.

9. Nicci French are actually two people. It’s the married couple Nicci Gerrard and Sean French who write the books together.

Nicci Gerard is also a journalist for the observer and has 2 kids.
Sean French has worked for Vogue for a while. Now he writes a weekly column for the new statesman.

b. Summary of the contents
Alice is a young and successful woman, who lives in the heart of London. She lives together with Jake, an engineer. One day she meets a man crossing the street. Without thinking she lets him take her to his apartment where they make love. After a few erotic adventures with this man, who’s called Adam, she decides to leave Jake.

She marries him on a hill when they’re on a hiking trip together. Adam takes a picture of her while doing that. Alice has lost all their friends, because they were also friends of Jake, who is still of the edge of a breakdown.

Adam and Alice get strange letters with strange messages. Alice gets more and more frightened, when she finds her cat murdered in the bathtub she is really scared. At the same time Alice founds out more and more about Adam’s past. She find out Adam murdered his ex-girlfriend on the Himalaya-expedition. and killed his other ex-girlfriends who left him also.

Alice wants to leave him but she knows that when she does, he will kill her to. So she goes to the police, when she’s telling her story she realized that one of Adam’s ex-girlfriends is buried on the place she married him and where the picture was taken. After a long time of begging she gets the police to come with her to that spot and start digging for the body.
The body is found. When they go back to the apartment of Adam to arrest him, they see Adam has hanged himself. The book ends like this.

c. Personal Response
2. the most important problem is of course Alice her problem of not getting killed by her own husband. The problem is in a way solved because Adam has hanged himself. But she can’t get the people back Adam has killed. or get her old life with Jake and her old friends back.

I have no idea how I would have responded to this amount of ignorance and despair. The police doesn’t believe Alice at first and if they had ignored her, she would’ve got killed also. But I do think it is the only option besides killing the man who brings such danger.

5. The book Killing me softly reminds me of the other books Nicci French had written. Because they are very similar. The red line of the stories are most of the time the same. There’s always a man involved who has in some way power over the woman in the story. It’s an interesting subject, though. But you should not read them one after another. Because you will get tired of reading the same story with different characters over and over again. Make sure there’s more time between you reading the first and the second.