The Tenth Girl is an ambitious, atmospheric ghost story that will polarize readers

Sara Faring’s The Tenth Girl is an ambitious, well-written ghost story, but its twist ending will leave many readers feeling uncomfortably blindsided.

Fall is here, which means it’s the season for ghost stories. And readers everywhere plan to get in the mood for spooky season by diving into appropriately themed horror tales. Sara Faring’s debut novel The Tenth Girl definitely fits the bill in that regard, wrapping a ghost story, a haunted house mystery and some uncomfortable body horror into a thoroughly creepy and disturbing package. Yet the novel’s shock ending will inevitably polarize readers, many of whom will feel that its final twist undoes much of its previous story.

There’s so much to like about The Tenth Girl. A haunted house saga set in 1970s Argentina, it follows the story of Mavi, a daughter of revolutionaries, who takes up a job teaching at a remote boarding school for girls to escape the country’s vicious military government. But the Vaccaro School is full of secrets and darkness – situated on a plot of land stolen from the local Zapuche tribe, a curse seems to stalk its hallways.

The Tenth Girl is at its best in these segments, when it focuses on the Vaccaro School’s grisly origins and eccentric collection of teachers, who seem pretty much assembled from the Island of Misfit Toys. The atmosphere is creepy as all get out, the setting drips with Gothic horror elements – secret passageways, poorly lit hallways, a mysterious headmistress with a dark agenda of her own. The mythology is dense and dark, and even the flashbacks to Mavi’s time as a child with her resistance leader mother are compelling.

(Personally, I’d have rather the story stayed with Mavi’s story and POV, rather than introducing the novel’s second narrator, as her character was much more interesting to me.)

However, the story is told in a split POV format, with chapters focusing on the aforementioned Mavi alternating with those narrated by a mysterious second figure known as Angel. Angel is an “Other”, one of the apparently dozens of ghostly beings who slink through the darkness of the Vaccaro School, haunting and feeding on the nine students present. Lots of this is deeply disturbing, and many of the characters in this novel survive some truly horrible things. (including possession, rape, mutilation, and all manner of other nightmare scenarios). And, unfortunately, we never delve as deeply into Angel’s POV and motivations as we need to, for reasons that will become obvious later on.

About 75% of the way through the book, there’s a shocking, deeply unexpected twist in The Tenth Girl that changes much of what we know about the story that came before. It’s one of those jaw dropping moments that is impossible to discuss in any concrete way without running the risk of spoilers. But, let’s just say this: People are either going to gasp and love this moment, or throw the book across the room when they get there.

To be fair, as a narrative decision, it’s a bold choice. But it does undo much of what came before it – and makes some of the several hundred pages we just read through feel a bit pointless. For many readers, The Tenth Girl’s ending will completely work, suddenly giving the historical story a shockingly modern perspective. For others, the twist will feel as though it comes out of nowhere, thoroughly destabilizing the plot that the novel spends hundreds of pages building.

Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about The Tenth Girl’s ending. It’s the sort of shocking narrative decision that, on paper, I want to support. It’s a move that’s the furthest thing from predictable. Yet, the twist doesn’t entirely work for me simply because it occurs so late in the novel that it’s never fully explained. And, we’ve spent so much time in the world of The Tenth Girl before this change occurs, that it’s hard not to view it as…well, almost as a waste of time.

The Tenth Girl is one of those stories that has a lot to recommend it – the detailed, creepy setting, the ghost story at its heart – but it’s definitely a novel that you’ll have to try for yourself and see if it works for you.

The Tenth Girl is available now.