Customer Reviews

Invisible Eden: A Story Of Love and Murder On Cape Cod

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

I'm only several chapters into this book, and though the story is interesting, I can't believe the poor level of writing. Does this author write cheap romances? A few examples speak for themselves:

"...he captained her onto the pillowy pier of her Posturpedic."

(I was ready to drop the book after reading that one)

"Casanovia college boys, their surfboards strapped onto their cars like fiberglass codpieces..."

(this allusion makes no sense at all, you do not strap a codpiece on a roof, it would more resemble the "bras" on sportscars. Now if she had said fiberglass phaluses it would be bad, but at least closer)

Only 375 pages to go.

Same person here from Europe. I finished the book, thought it was so poorly written, researched, everything, that I wanted to give it NO stars but then found I couldn't post without at least one! There are so many spelling errors of well-known names and places that it drove me nuts. Other readers are correct when they point out that the author pretends to know what Christa was thinking and feeling during major events in her life when she knew her as well as I did which is not at all. The author repeats the same things over and over and over, ad nauseum. Great way to pad out a book so one can charge for more pages. And some of the things that she wrote about the people in her community were so insulting and appalling, she should probably think about relocating because I bet she's not on anybody's guest lists this season.

While I am an avid reader and enjoy non-fiction, I found this book to be extremely difficult to get through. Flook's writing is tedious and includes so many trivial details that I found myself wishing the book would end around page 50. Christa Worthington's story could be a compelling read, but any excitement is lost in the minutiae. If you are looking for a true-crime book that will grab you at the beginning, entwine you in the story, and keep you interested throughout, this is not it.

While there were some bits of wonderful folklore and history about the towns of Truro and Provincetown--both favorites of mine--I agree with a number of readers who were turned off by the poor quality of the writing and its overwrought tone. I also found that the author's repeated attempts to draw the reader to parallels between herself and Christa Worthington rang false and forced, it's lazy writing. Additionally, and adding to the poor quality was the numerous occasions of repeated information, either by using the same exact sentence, same quote, or turn of phrase. It was so prevalent, I can't believe the editor or author didn't realize this was the case, and it's too sloppy to have been done intentionally, there would be no purpose served in having the bits repeated. I held a morbid interest in this story due to my attachment to the place it discussed, I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but I've read enough of this ilk to know that this was hardly a stellar example of true crime reporting. Really a shame, as there is an abundance of wonderful history to be told, and so many colorful characters, that, on top of the intrinsic human nature to be interested in unsolved murders of the rich and even marginally famous, left me surprised at how the author failed each time to take advantage and create any interest. She seemed more obsessed with mimicking Christa Worthington's flowery writing style, again, failing miserably and often completely distracting the reader from the story with an inappropriately used adjective or metaphor. I actually skipped whole paragraphs and sections because I couldn't bear to read their content.

I did not read this book until after a suspect was arrested for the murder of Christa Worthington. In retrospect Flook's book seems laughable now as the whole picture she painted of Christa Worthington had absolutely nothing to do with her death.

Flook goes way off on too many tangents here: the history of the Cape, the Pilgrims, the fishing industry, etc. I got the sense that she was just filling pages. The fact is that she had really nothing to contribute to the case herself. She was able to talk to the DA and to Tony Jackett and Tim Arnold, but they ultimately provided no useful information on Worthington's murder.

The other thing that bothers me is Flook's nearly complete negative portrayal of everyone in this story: Worthington especially, but also people who live and work on Cape Cod. No one is spared her indignation.

The sad part is that Flook contributed to the hysterical finger-pointing that occured on the Cape over the past 3 years. Everyone seemed to blame Worthington for her own murder. Reading Flook's book you start to believe that Worthington's "crime" of being a single mom who liked to fool around with married men contributed to her murder. The truth, apparently, is that it was a random act of violence. Flook needs to own up to her role in smearing Worthington's reputation.

If you must read this book, look for it in the library, don't buy it.

I bought this because another true crime book-- In His Garden, by Leo Damore, about the Tony Costa murders in Provincetown in the 60's-- is a brilliant, comprehensive look at a murderer and his times. I was hoping for something similar. What a disappointment. Invisible Eden is badly written, numbingly repetitive, padded out with all kinds of irrelevant material, and bizarrely focussed on the small details of the victim's sex life. The author turns out to have the rare ability to make sex seem dull, but while striving to titillate she reduces Christa Worthington to a stock character, someone out of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. She doesn't get any more about the murder or the suspects than the newspapers did--in fact she barely seems to try. And to see how cheap she holds Worthington's life--breathily detailing her own minor flirtation with the DA as they bend over photographs of Worthington's stripped and bloodied body--is truly repulsive.

While comparison's to Capote's In Cold Blood or Mailer's Executioner's Song abound, Flook's oportunistic literary non-fiction differs in one essential and unfortunate aspect: Whereas Mailer and Capote explore the psyches of violent criminals, Flook purports to explore the psyche of a victim of violent crime, essentially re-victimizing her all over again.

I, too, was looking forward to this book. Truro, as a town, is a wonderful character. But, there is something to be said about shoe-leather reporting, knocking on doors, talking to the principals in any case, that makes a true crime book readable. I realize the author is not a journalist, but maybe that's the problem. It was appalling how the author gave up her sources - going as far as getting the prosecutor booted off the case. This nightmare should have gone straight to paperback.

Poorly written and poorly edited, Invisible Eden represents one of the few times in my life that I have felt that I wasted money on a book. Apart from a classroom example of "how NOT to write", this book has no redeeming value. There is no continuity. There is a lot of name-dropping but no clear connection of those names to the story of Christa Worthington. I have to assume that the author was under pressure to submit some number of words under a deadline. Anything that came to mind was just splashed onto the pages.

Being a Cape resident and avid reader I had high hopes for this book. It turned out to be several books in one including a history of parts of the Cape; a mystery; and an autobiography; all of which seemed random and out of sequence. Sadly, the author felt we'd like to know about her life and thoughts and seemed to think we'd be impressed and/or pleased to know that she somehow felt her life paralled Christa Worthington's? Ms. Flook told the reader way more than we needed to know and often used crude language to express it. When she was wasn't being vulgar she filled passages with vocabulary that seemed meant to impress (I wasn't). Her historical information was interesting but it didn't seem to be the right venue. It seemed as though she had very little IMPORTANT information about Christa Worthington and ended up throwing in a lot of "stuff" so that she could fill the book. In short, I felt the author was extremely egotistical and the subject's privacy was majorly invaded. (Why in the world did we have to know that she had abortions, let alone how many?) ....don't bother