I try not to look at too many reviews of something before I actually read it, but usually skim through a few to get an idea of whether or not I’ll like something. I don’t always agree, but this time I did. On both the positive and negative. I Kill Giants gets praised for both its exploration of a child dealing with grief and trauma, and its narrative structure; but criticism for some characters and use of hateful language in a few places. I agree with all of it.
I Kill Giants focuses of Barbara, a loner geeky girl with apparent severe social and/or personality problems. One of the interesting things about how the story is told is that you only get to see her reacting to things but don’t know quite what it is or why until 2/3 of the way through the story. Barbara gets bullied at school, talks back to teachers, administrators, and the school psychologist. She has issues at home with both parents being largely absent, although you later find out Mom has a pretty good reason for not being as present as she might otherwise be at least from Barbara’s perspective. Barbara gets violent on occasion, both physically and verbally, when reacting to people prodding her about her mother, which is one of the problems, since she rarely gets disciplined, and most of the adults present seem to enable her. The title comes from Barbara’s general refusal to engage with the world around her, and preferring to stay in a D&D inspired fantasy world where she can slay monsters (which turn out to be metaphorical).
The thing that really confused me about the whole story was Sophia. Sophia tries to make friends with Barbara but is never quite sure how to communicate with her. Beyond Barbara being the first person Sophia meets, being a new girl in town/at school, I don’t see why Sophia tries so hard to be friends given all the ugly things that she gets drawn into, including getting hit in the face (by accident), and getting on the bad side of the bullies. The bullies are another thing I don’t quite get; they seem to have a personal grudge against Barbara, but other than one passing comment, there’s little reason for it, which is troubling given how intense it gets.
In spite of the problems, which sometimes made the book hard to read- and the art in places was also hard to decipher- the ending pretty much redeemed things. Not to get too spoilery, but Barbara discovers something about the monsters and starts to mature a little in terms of dealing with the world outside of herself. There’s one little hole in the story at the end, what exactly happens to Barbara for a few pages while she’s off-page, but otherwise it’s ok. The last image in particular is actually pretty sweet, not a descriptor that would have fit Barbara or the story until the last page.