SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne has a pretty intriguing premise:  Since she was young, Molly Southbourne has been told she must desperately avoid bleeding.  If she bleeds, her parents inform her she must cleanse the blood with bleach and then burn it.  For if she doesn't, a clone of Molly, a "molly" (all lowercase) will be born from her blood and these mollys all tend to eventually try to kill Molly, or so it would seem.  If a molly is born, Molly has to kill her duplicate before it does something dangerous.

The story follows Molly from early childhood to young adulthood as she attempts to figure out who and what she is and what she can really be as a person with her "condition."  What kind of person can one be when one can't even bleed, and when one has killed hundreds of....herself before she's even 18? 

In essence, the story is kind of an example of psychological horror/weird SciFi that also typified to a lesser extent in Thompson's Rosewater (one of my favorite books from last year) or Jeff Vandermeer's work.  The story is certainly interesting and different, but I don't know, I never really found myself that interested in Molly as a character, and as this is HER story, it didn't overall work for me as there's really nothing else here.  The framing device used to start and end the story is pretty predictable and doesn't really add anything.  Again, it's not a bad story, and the premise is interesting....but it relies entirely on being interested in Molly as a character, and there just wasn't enough substance in her for me.