Hide By Kiersten White
In Hide by Kiersten White, fourteen young adults sign up for a hide and seek competition located inside an infamous abandoned carnival. The prize for being the sole winner: $50,000.
Honestly, $50K probably wouldn’t be enough incentive for most people to sign up for a potentially dangerous competition like this. If this was a real game or reality show, the winnings would probably be at least $1 million. But these 14 contestants are a beleaguered bunch, especially Mack, the novel’s central protagonist.
When she was a kid, Mack (short for Mackenzie) hid in a cupboard while her father went berserk and slaughtered the rest of her family. Her dad then took his own life after being confronted by the police. Years of trauma and survivor’s guilt have left Mack an empty shell of a person. She’s homeless, destitute, and has absolutely nothing to lose.
The contest lasts for seven days, with two people knocked out of the competition per day. Mack is confident that she can outlast her competitors, but none of the players understand the sinister true nature of the contest. As the stakes grow higher and people begin to vanish, Mack and the other remaining players confront a horrifying evil lurking inside the park.
I will tread carefully here, because I don’t want to spoil this book’s many twists. I’ll be vague on the plot details, but White uses the hiding game to examine themes of classism, prejudice, and generational conflict. This is done subtly at first, but becomes very overt in the last third of the story.
The main antagonist is an elderly woman named Linda. She’s a powerful matriarch who has run the game for decades. Some of the novel is spent inside Linda’s head, and we learn all the justifications and rationalizations that she has for her misdeeds. Like most good villains, Linda genuinely sees herself as a hero, and even as a martyr of sorts.
Hide is about a young generation struggling to survive because of the sins of their elders. They live in a society where the gap between the haves and have nots is larger than the freakin’ Grand Canyon.
The old “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” American dream has been exposed as B.S., but the older generation, who comparatively had everything handed to them on a silver platter, think they’re just a bunch of lazy whiners. They want young folks to play their game by their rules.
In the afterword, White explains that her initial inspiration for the story was rage about her daughter having to go through school shooting drills. This is just one of many real-life examples that reflect the novel’s themes. Hide covers some of the same thematic ground as Guillotine by Delilah Dawson. I recommend it for anyone who enjoyed that book.
Hide does have one major issue: too many characters. As I previously mentioned, there are 14 contestants, plus Linda and several other people who help run the so-called contest. White jumps from POV to POV throughout the book, getting into nearly every character’s head at least once.
Keep in mind that this novel is very short. My paperback edition is 236 pages. That isn’t nearly enough time to properly develop so many characters. Why not just have seven contestants, with one elimination per day? That would have made the story tighter.
White’s writing is proficient. It’s not particularly fancy prose, but it doesn’t need to be. Like Rachel Harrison’s novel So Thirsty, there’s nothing at all wrong with adopting a simple mainstream style. Or, if it is wrong, then I’m guilty as well!
This is my second Kiersten White book. The first was Mister Magic. I enjoyed both, but I prefer Mister Magic because the plot is more interesting, the characters are better defined, and the villain is creepier. But Hide is a solid effort as well. I’m interested in reading more of White’s work.
Rating
Despite being overstuffed with expendable characters and multiple POV’s, Hide works as both entertaining horror and a searing indictment of contemporary society.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 7.5
