Read this way too early (it doesn’t even have a cover!!), so will save a proper review until closer to the publication date, but rest assured: it’s a Read this way too early (it doesn’t even have a cover!!), so will save a proper review until closer to the publication date, but rest assured: it’s a banger. I am so thrilled Harriet Lane has returned to writing fiction after such a long break, and this is everything I could have hoped for. An obsessive narrator, a slow-crawling tension, hundreds of razor-sharp observations. Can’t wait to read this again and think/write more about it.
A story that mixes supernatural horror with the much more frightening realities of human transgression, Father of Lies revolves around a church officiA story that mixes supernatural horror with the much more frightening realities of human transgression, Father of Lies revolves around a church official, Eldon Fochs, who comes to a psychiatrist with descriptions of disturbing, violent dreams. But are they dreams or confessions? When these conversations coincide with real-life allegations, Fochs’ church – the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb, or Bloodites as they’re more casually known – insists the psychiatrist must surrender his notes. As well as being a horror story, this is a vicious religious satire, and it comes as no surprise to learn the author is ex-LDS.
It’s a short, sharp nightmare of a book that deals with religious institutions, repression, and the monstrous things lurking beneath the surface of seemingly normal lives. Evenson’s writing is clinical in a way that makes everything feel even more disturbing – he never lingers too long on the details, which somehow makes it worse. My only complaint: I’d have preferred it if the narrative had stuck with the mixed-media format it has at the beginning, rather than switching to the rather flat perspective of the villain....more
I haven’t read any of the other books in Boyne’s ‘Elements’ series, but I’d seen several comparisons between this and Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, so I hadI haven’t read any of the other books in Boyne’s ‘Elements’ series, but I’d seen several comparisons between this and Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, so I had to check it out. The comparison is understandable, since both books centre on a female predator. But while Boyne’s writing is assured, Fire lacks the wit, irreverence and boldness Tampa has in spades. Freya is a beautiful, successful surgeon in her thirties who has a disturbing secret life. A second part of the narrative discloses a traumatic incident from her childhood, and Fire purports (if you believe the blurb) to ask: ‘Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person?’ I’m not sure it really answers that, although maybe it’s meant to be a jumping-off point for discussions rather than an examination of trauma in and of itself.
I found this competently written and a brisk, tense read, though I don’t know that I got much out of it or thought it was doing much of anything really. It’s very short – more novella than novel – and the character development is the kind of sketch you get in a short story: it’s efficient but there’s little room for it to breathe. Maybe it’s more effective in the context of the others in this series, and I found Fire interesting enough that I’d still consider reading them....more
After loving Great Granny Webster earlier this year, I knew I would have to read more Caroline Blackwood, and this recent reissue provided the perAfter loving Great Granny Webster earlier this year, I knew I would have to read more Caroline Blackwood, and this recent reissue provided the perfect opportunity. The Fate of Mary Rose is something quite different: it’s a pitch-dark crime novel told from the perspective of Rowan Anderson, a self-absorbed, very unhappily married historian. He despises his meek wife, Cressida, and their feeble daughter Mary Rose; he visits them seldom, and reluctantly. He also has a long-term mistress whom he continually belittles. Despite all this, Blackwood takes us so persuasively into Rowan’s perspective that he begins to seem the most reasonable person in this story. Its focus is the preoccupation Cressida develops with the disappearance of a little girl, Maureen, in the village where she and Mary Rose live. This turns into a fevered obsession; then it spreads to the other women in Rowan’s life. He becomes increasingly desperate to be rid of Cressida, leading to a series of dreadful decisions.
It’s easy to see why this book was chosen for reintroduction to a modern audience. Cressida’s disturbing obsession with Maureen, fed by a relentless media focus on the case, seems to prefigure the recent slew of novels about the relationship between true crime and its audiences. It’s also a neat representation of class anxiety, since Maureen lived on a recently-built, much-reviled council estate near Beckham, the otherwise idyllic village where Cressida and Mary Rose live. (I felt the villagers’ hand-wringing over this, the council estate seen as a ‘breeding ground for squalor, disease and crime’, could have come straight out of a novel published today.) The Fate of Mary Rose doesn’t quite have the rapier wit of Great Granny Webster, and there’s a quite different tone, leaning towards melodrama (not a criticism!). The marketing for this edition compares it to Shirley Jackson, which feels accurate to me. Camilla Grudova’s introduction is also great and provides some intriguing context about Blackwood herself....more
A music student arrives in Cambridge to start his degree, aware his ordinary background marks him out as an outsider. Things start to change when he fA music student arrives in Cambridge to start his degree, aware his ordinary background marks him out as an outsider. Things start to change when he forms an unlikely friendship with the wealthy and charismatic Bryn Cavendish, a talented magician with a thing for the occult. Yet as their bond deepens, the narrator’s obsession with both Bryn and his girlfriend Alexa threatens to become dangerous...
Yeah, I know: this premise is the stuff of a thousand debuts, and at first I assumed it would be a retread of themes that appear in lots of first novels. In some ways, it is, and that’s fine with me; as long as these books are well-written and not straight-up plagiarism, I almost always enjoy them. In my early notes, however, I was writing phrases like ‘really not doing anything original’. I’d have put it in the same category as, say, The Cloisters): enjoyable, but hardly breaking the mould. Then something started to shift. It begins with the addition of a horror angle, of course – the suggestion, writ large in the title, that Bryn Cavendish might be something a bit more diabolical than just an amateur magician.
But it goes further: this turns out to be a narrative that subverts and rewrites itself, turning all its ideas upside down and shaking everything out. In doing that, it does more than just tell an engaging story: it gets to the heart of why so many of us are fascinated by these stories about academia and privilege. While there are some powerfully creepy scenes, ultimately what sent the biggest chill down my spine was the warning built in to the narrator’s account – one about the dangers of mythologising a person, a lifestyle, or even yourself. How insidious a fantasy can be, how easy to cling to, and what that might look like from the outside. It’s a stunning spin on familiar tropes.
I read And He Shall Appear twice in 2024: the first time, I felt it gathered pace as it went along, building to a crescendo; I finished the book in a daze, intoxicated by it, already thinking about when I’d read it again. The second time, I was so riveted – all the way through – I could hardly bear to break off. The book it reminded me of most was The Bellwether Revivals (it similarly entwines an outsider-at-Oxbridge narrative with hints of the supernatural), with shades of The Party (themes of obsession and manipulation – as well as just how enjoyable it is to read) and Engleby (the narrative approach). It’s also reminiscent of The Little Stranger in its use of supernatural elements. I am predisposed to love books of this type, but I really do think van der Borgh pulls it off with more panache than most. An instant favourite.
I received an advance review copy of And He Shall Appear from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I have to admit, I’d been somewhat dismissive of Louise Doughty’s books; I’d always assumed they were pretty ordinary thrillers. Then, this summer, I I have to admit, I’d been somewhat dismissive of Louise Doughty’s books; I’d always assumed they were pretty ordinary thrillers. Then, this summer, I watched the TV adaptation of Apple Tree Yard and was captivated by it. Days, even weeks, afterwards I was still thinking about the characters, wondering what they’d done next, as though they were real people. I wasn’t sure how much of this was down to the actors’ chemistry and how much was the writing – either way, I was left with the irresistible urge to read the novel. I simply wanted more of the story.
Of course, this also meant I a) knew the whole plot going in, and b) had existing mental images of the characters based on their TV counterparts. So a significantly different reading experience than I’d otherwise have had, and one that could have gone either way. Thankfully, I loved it as soon as I started reading, and I’m pretty sure I would have felt the same regardless. I loved the evasiveness of Yvonne’s narrative – she admits to self-editing very early on, and the question of which details she may have revised hangs over the whole thing. At the same time I also loved how real she feels as a character, and how this constructed story betrays all her doubt, yearning and desperation. It made me think of Based on a True Story and Signs of Life, and has settled immediately into that niche reserved for my favourite twisty character studies. Also, will definitely read more Doughty....more
This was not what I expected at all. It’s a deceptive story in more ways than one, a disturbing tale of abuse wrapped in layers of character study andThis was not what I expected at all. It’s a deceptive story in more ways than one, a disturbing tale of abuse wrapped in layers of character study and contemplative literary fiction. Weeks after reading, I’m still mulling over its complexity and figuring out what I thought about it.
The narrator, a somewhat aimless writer, is invited to spend a summer in Greece with Helena, an artist she once interviewed. From the start, there’s something slightly off: a coldly obsessive edge to the narrator’s approach that suggests she closely observes – but doesn’t understand – others’ relationships. Looking for identity through other people, the narrator seems to hold Helena in contempt while simultaneously coveting her life. She speaks of desire for Helena, but this seems less erotic than bloodthirsty; one gets the sense the narrator would rather wear Helena’s skin than sleep with her. Once ensconced in the city of Ermoupoli, her observations take on an even more sinister cast as the focus of her obsession shifts to Olga, Helena’s 15-year-old daughter.
So much of Antiquity puts it into a particular literary category: a lonely person wanders an unfamiliar place, interrogating their life in chilly, lucid prose. It put me in mind of Intimacies, The Coming Bad Days and The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. The effect is enhanced because it seems untethered from time (what decade is this story taking place in?) and any real sense of the world beyond the narrator’s current experience (Helena is an artist, but we learn virtually nothing about her art). Suspended between these musings on her life, the passages in which the narrator briefly discusses her encounters with Olga are jarring: both blasé and evasive.
Antiquity has been marketed as ‘a queer Lolita story’, which at first I thought was just an attention-grabbing (and maybe even a bit crass) way of describing a plot that involves a relationship with an age and power disparity. But the deeper I got into the story, the more I could see the comparison – if not in terms of style, then in the way Johansson’s narrator obfuscates and dances around the truth. It’s easy to start thinking the writing is so good that it doesn’t need this ‘taboo’ hook. I kept catching myself admiring the narrator’s description of a place or her insight into herself; basically, forgetting who she was, forgetting that this is a confession. There’s her queasy and, surely, knowing assertion that ‘[Olga] was in charge, she was the one wielding her power over me’; her horribly indulgent idea that Olga will look back on their entanglement fondly: ‘I gave her a story she’d be able to tell someone who loved her later on.’
The narrator repeatedly and obsessively returns to the idea of deliberately constructing her memories. Her mental images of these months in Ermoupoli are ‘a story I told myself, a memory I was preparing for later.’ Forcing herself to picture a swimming octopus alongside the things she’s actually seen there, she thinks ‘it was not a real memory but it was just as real as a real memory, no different.’
All this contrasts severely with the language the narrator uses about Olga. The way she describes their first physical encounter is a stark reminder that she knows exactly what she’s doing: ‘I gave her an indelible memory... I tore a hole in her history.’ And so the final line sends a chill down the spine as the narrator takes control once again. At this point – the forcible reminder of whose version of this story we have always been reading – I was once again brought back to Lolita. Only the perpetrator has the luxury of perfecting their own memories, weaving them into a picturesque story....more
A ruthless killer stalks LA, simultaneously taunting and avoiding the suspicions of his old airforce buddy – now a policeman – and becoming obsessed wA ruthless killer stalks LA, simultaneously taunting and avoiding the suspicions of his old airforce buddy – now a policeman – and becoming obsessed with a woman who lives in his building. Noir perfection, absolutely gripping, as well as a wonderful portrait of the place and era in which it is set....more
It’s funny to think I might never have read this – while I loved Spider, it didn’t make me immediately want to go out and buy everything else the authIt’s funny to think I might never have read this – while I loved Spider, it didn’t make me immediately want to go out and buy everything else the author had written. I only picked up Dr Haggard’s Disease because I found a copy in one of my favourite charity bookshops. Now I’m kicking myself. I think it might actually be a masterpiece. Why isn’t it better known, more widely read? And have I been sleeping on the rest of McGrath’s books?
Edward Haggard is a man who has led an extremely limited and suppressed life. Now a country doctor, he mostly keeps to his isolated, windswept house and tries to cope with the pain caused by ‘Spike’, the metal pin that holds his hip together, legacy of an old injury. His sole relationship seems to have been an affair some years ago. He was a promising young registrar; she was the wife of a senior pathologist. Haggard is already utterly consumed by memories of this woman, but they really explode back into his life when he receives an unexpected visit from her son, a young RAF pilot. Soon, it appears the obsession is transferring itself from mother to son in unique and disturbing fashion.
I’ve mentioned many times that I dislike the trope of a person being obsessed with a short relationship many years in the past. It’s often used as a lazy way to demonstrate a character’s emotional immaturity, or a plot point to bring them back into contact with someone or something. But here is a rare example of a story in which it works beautifully. It’s painfully obvious to the reader that the affair was much more significant to Haggard than to Frances – a fact of which, even after so much obsessive reflection, he appears unaware. The depth of his obsession has overridden reality (as we see when he claims to have manifested a haunting by her, a disturbing hint of what’s to come). Then there’s the uncomfortable fact that Haggard narrates the whole tale of the affair, including many intimate details, to his lover’s son. This always-disconcerting background hum rises to a crescendo when Haggard’s beliefs about James – his ‘disease’ – reach their apotheosis. It’s a revelation that paints our protagonist as not just disturbed, but truly deranged.
Yet worse is to come. That final scene! That last line! That hideous, indelible image! Has any novel of obsession ever segued quite so effectively into psychological horror?
The books I love can be roughly sorted into two categories: those that thrill me with the skill of the writing, and those that seem to speak to my soul. Dr Haggard’s Disease was both. It’s an immaculately written, riveting, unsettling novel, one that immediately felt close to my heart....more
I read The Last Language in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze Jennifer duBois has created here. The narroI read The Last Language in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze Jennifer duBois has created here. The narrow perspective is such a clever way to tell this story because it so closely parallels Angela’s facilitated communication with Sam. When all we have is her account, how can we ever know what is true? Who has the ability to decide whether Angela is speaking for the ‘real’ Sam or simply ventriloquising through him? Are her final words defiant denial or a kind of confession? I will be coming back to this one, but for now: wow, what a superb, riveting, disturbing novel. I loved Cartwheel – which, like this, was based on a real-life case – but The Last Language surpasses it.
I received an advance review copy of The Last Language from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
Just when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idJust when you think the first-person novel of disaster/breakdown/mental unravelling has had its day, something comes along that reinvents the whole idea. Hydra feels entirely fresh, though it’s difficult to pinpoint why exactly. Maybe it’s protagonist Anja’s job at an auction house. Maybe it’s the story’s main setting: a derelict cottage on the wild fringes of a naval base with a dark history. Maybe it’s the extracts that appear throughout: taken from an investigative report written thirty years earlier, they chronicle strange incidents – with a supernatural cause? – on the same naval base. But most of all, I think, it’s the distinct voice Howell creates for Anja. Her narration, liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks, is delightfully idiosyncratic; her wry tone rings out from the page.
There are whole swathes of the book where I could just quote everything Anja says. Her professional rival, Fran, is ‘a girl who’d forgotten she was a woman’; she bemoans her boss with his ‘orderly procession of pretty fuckboys’, and the ‘decaying boyish smile’ of a toadying colleague. Anja on Queen Anne furniture: ‘a design period so feminine one could imagine menstrual blood seeping from the furniture’s joints.’ Anja on the increasing coldness between her and erstwhile best friend Beth: ‘growing apart from me also meant growing apart from herself – best to let me be the whore.’
At first, our antiheroine seems to be on the up: she’s well on her way to securing the coveted position of ‘specialist’. (Anja on the prospect of Fran beating her to it: ‘If I didn’t make specialist before her, I’d die.’) But then, in quick succession, comes a series of disastrous events: the death of Anja’s mother, the breakdown of her marriage, and – most ruinously – a dramatic incident at an open house. Anja is rendered jobless and disgraced in one fell swoop. Desperate for an escape, she buys the aforementioned derelict cottage on impulse. Which is when things get weird – and we start to understand the connection between Anja’s narrative and the investigative report.
I know a lot of people are fed up of ‘unhinged woman’ novels, and I have been losing my patience with them too, but Hydra really is a cut above. The style definitely has shades of Ottessa Moshfegh, but it’s wittier – at times, Anja’s one-liners are reminiscent of Emma Jane Unsworth’s Animals – and Hydra also feels like a book twin to the film Tár. When the history of the cottage is revealed in full, and when Anja makes her triumphant, deranged and utterly career-crippling return to the auction house, the message is the same: wildness and violence are never as far away as you think....more
I remembered, I did not remember. And the strange thing was that, in the end, it came to exactly the same thing.
Just one of the best dark character stI remembered, I did not remember. And the strange thing was that, in the end, it came to exactly the same thing.
Just one of the best dark character studies™ I’ve ever read. Like The Collector and God’s Own Country in that we’re entirely immersed in one person’s dishonest and unreliable viewpoint, with direct glimpses into their victim/target’s perspective (in this case via the letters and diaries Engleby steals from Jennifer) underlined by an undertone in the storytelling (Engleby speaks of Jennifer as though she’s a friend, yet there’s never any dialogue between them). But this is also the story of its narrator’s whole life, and at points – especially when Engleby becomes a journalist and has some bizarre meetings with famous politicians of the 1980s – it felt like I was reading some unhinged alternate version of Any Human Heart. Faulks is also incredibly good at threading cutting insights into the bile: Engleby can be droning on about something and suddenly there’s an observation so arresting it stops you dead. I never wanted it to end....more
A story with disturbing subject matter in which, somehow, the horror is offset by the prose. Extremely short – really more of a short story than a novA story with disturbing subject matter in which, somehow, the horror is offset by the prose. Extremely short – really more of a short story than a novella – which is perhaps just as well. Certainly a ‘good’ rather than ‘enjoyable’ book, yet the memorable voice elevates it. Elevates it where, I’m not sure. Still thinking about it....more
When his sister and her husband are killed in a car crash, writer and professor Gil Duggan becomes the guardian of his 17-year-old nephew, Matthew. AnWhen his sister and her husband are killed in a car crash, writer and professor Gil Duggan becomes the guardian of his 17-year-old nephew, Matthew. And, family tragedy aside, he’s not exactly happy about it: Gil has hated Matthew since an incident involving his daughter on a family holiday some years ago, and believes he is a nascent psychopath. When Matthew moves into the Duggans’ home in Vermont, tensions rise. Gil becomes increasingly obsessed with his nephew, partly because of his jealousy of Matthew’s immense wealth (his father was a high-flying banker). Matthew certainly seems devious. But Gil, we know, is an unreliable narrator, and the more he crosses the line – following Matthew, devising outlandish theories – the more his credibility falters.
There are no true surprises here: as so often with this type of story, the pleasure is in the writing, and in the small details of the characterisation, particularly of Gil. I am getting a bit tired of the archetype he represents – the perfectly comfortable middle-class person who thinks not being super-rich is the same thing as being poor – but it’s undeniably used very well here: so clearly an obsession Gil can’t let go of, as much a factor in his disintegration as his hatred of Matthew. Things are wrapped up really smartly at the end, too, with a conclusion that’s satisfying on several fronts. I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoyed A Lonely Man or Hawk Mountain.
I received an advance review copy of A Flaw in the Design from the publisher through NetGalley....more
(First read November 2021; reread December 2022.) This is a book that is perfect to me. Not a book I am trying to claim is objectively perfect, but a (First read November 2021; reread December 2022.) This is a book that is perfect to me. Not a book I am trying to claim is objectively perfect, but a book that is perfect to me, that feels precisely calibrated for me. Everything about the story, how it’s told, how it’s written, the strength of the voice, the momentum of the plot... the slow unfolding, the macabre details, the setting, the beautiful writing about landscape, the expression of both freedom and isolation, the ways in which the ending is delicious and unsettling at once. There are moments in this book that comfort and console me, and others that leave me chilled to the bone – not in a ‘spooky’ way, but existentially. Honestly, probably top 10 of all time for me. I am so glad I have it to reread forever.
From the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think aboutFrom the moment I started reading Death of a Bookseller, I was absolutely lost to the story – sucked down into it so completely I couldn’t think about anything else. Alice Slater has written a novel that sinks in its teeth and refuses to let go; I buzzed for days after finishing it.
Roach has worked at a beleaguered branch of Spines, a chain of bookshops, since she was a teenager. Solitary and obsessed with true crime (specifically the killers rather than the victims, whose stories she generally finds boring), Roach scoffs at ‘normies’ and spends much of her time listening to podcasts about famous murders. When a new team are brought in to reverse the shop’s fortunes, she meets a very different type of bookseller: the wholesome, stylish, friendly Laura. Fixating on the fact that Laura also reads about serial killers and writes poetry with dark themes, Roach starts fantasising about a friendship. But the two women’s clashing views about the ethics surrounding true crime turn Laura against her... something Roach is very reluctant to accept.
The narrative switches between the perspectives of the two main characters – a surprise to me, as from the blurb I’d assumed Roach would tell the whole story. At first, I was sceptical: could Laura’s viewpoint possibly be as interesting as Roach’s cynical, scathing voice? Would the story become lopsided? But Laura’s chapters bring a depth and complexity to her character that ultimately unlocks the power of the story.
Sometimes Roach sounds like such an insufferable not-like-other-girls, sometimes Laura sounds like a tryhard London literary type – there are points where both of them will make you roll your eyes. Yet as dark as Roach’s story gets, it’s hard not to extend compassion to her, because the narrative is always extending compassion to her too. It’s the same thing with Laura: she’s often an absolute mess, and we see how her behaviour parallels Roach’s in ways she’d no doubt be reluctant to admit – but we get why. If at first it seems clear that Roach is the dark and Laura the light, somewhere along the line both characters are painted such similar shades of grey that they blend and bleed into each other.
Something I also want to mention, that might easily get lost amid the irresistible momentum of the plot, is the power of the settings. I particularly loved Roach and Laura’s workplace, the bookshop itself. I could truly feel the atmosphere of the place: both cosy and decrepit. The story unfolds in the run-up to Christmas, and the writing absolutely nails the magic and the horror of being wrapped up in non-stop work at that time of year. (It’s also so good on the specifics of working in retail that it unlocked memories I hadn’t thought about for over a decade.)
My literary recipe for Death of a Bookseller would involve: the razor-sharp character studies and themes of obsession and envy in Looker and Kiss Me First; the heady atmosphere of The Poison Tree; the deliciously nasty underbelly of Boy Parts and Eileen; and the spiralling, unstable mood of Animals or Problems – especially as the story reaches its climax and the protagonists seem bound for disaster.
This is, naturally, a bookseller’s book. But it’s also for anyone who considers themselves a reader; likes true crime; anyone who hates it, or is disdainful towards it; anyone who has ever worked in a shop, or in customer service. And it’s also stealthily a book about grief. Like its characters, Death of a Bookseller contains more layers and subtleties you might first assume. This is a thrilling story of obsession with a dark, sticky soul – and it’s also so much more.
I received an advance review copy of Death of a Bookseller from the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton....more
A perfect novel. Patrick McGrath is becoming one of my favourite writers. Asylum is more elegant and more restrained than Dr Haggard’s Disease andA perfect novel. Patrick McGrath is becoming one of my favourite writers. Asylum is more elegant and more restrained than Dr Haggard’s Disease and Spider, less obviously gothic, but like those books it is concerned with the life of the mind. One of the best portraits of a doomed love affair I’ve ever read, with the effect that I rooted for the characters against my will (and all reason)... McGrath evokes powerful emotions, but writes with the most beautifully precise, spare language. Another withholding (and suggestively named – Cleave!) narrator, so unobtrusive in his own story it’s some time before we even truly understand he’s there, controlling the whole thing: obsessively reconstructing scenes he never saw and conversations he never heard, stirring his obsession with Stella into everything he tells us. Love and delusion, fear and manipulation, layers of madness. I just loved this; McGrath’s shtick very much works for me....more
I’ve been eagerly awaiting another novel from Laura Sims, and How Can I Help You is everything I wanted and more. Like her excellent debut Looker, thiI’ve been eagerly awaiting another novel from Laura Sims, and How Can I Help You is everything I wanted and more. Like her excellent debut Looker, this is a sharp, nuanced character study about identity and obsession – but here, the stakes are altogether higher.
At the Carlyle Public Library, two women are not quite what they seem. Margo, who’s been a circulation clerk for two years, has a dark past, one that Sims wastes no time revealing to us. Her new colleague Patricia – a younger, more glamorous reference librarian – has somewhat bitterly given up her preferred career as a writer, having failed to sell her novel. Each woman senses something unaccountably intriguing in the other. Soon they are locked in a strange dance, trying to pry information from one another. Margo attempts to hide her true self, her mask slipping with increasing regularity; Patricia finds a new muse in her prickly coworker, and begins writing again. But this uneasy dynamic can’t last forever.
At points in the book, Margo and Patricia both find themselves transported by reading or writing – Margo with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (a book she, a non-reader, is drawn to because of Patricia’s love for it), and Patricia with her own manuscript (a fictionalised account of Margo’s life that is more true than she can know). I felt similarly enthralled by How Can I Help You, any thoughts of my own totally erased by the story. Margo in particular is a superb creation: repellent yet, in the oddest of ways, sympathetic; a villain with thrilling layers. Patricia’s fascination with her is entirely understandable. The community of the library is so well realised, too: the familiar patrons, the other staff with their own difficult relationships. These background characters contribute much to our understanding of the world Margo and Patricia inhabit.
If you loved Death of a Bookseller then this should be at the top of your wishlist; the energy between Margo and Patricia also reminded me of Eileen. It’s an utterly propulsive feat of literary suspense: gripping, complex, and unpredictable to the last (I thought I’d guessed how it would all end – and I was completely wrong).
I received an advance review copy of How Can I Help You from the publisher through Edelweiss....more
I was interested in Hawk Mountain from the moment I read the blurb: ‘a horror novel about partners and friends, fathers and sons, bullies and scapegoaI was interested in Hawk Mountain from the moment I read the blurb: ‘a horror novel about partners and friends, fathers and sons, bullies and scapegoats’... It wastes no time in presenting what immediately seems like a true nightmare of a scenario. Todd, a teacher and single dad, has a ‘chance encounter’ with Jack, who bullied him at school. As memories of that time crowd in on Todd, Jack claims he needs somewhere to spend the night – and then won’t leave. The idea of someone who made your life hell in the past finagling their way in like this, even establishing a bond with your child, is skin-crawling stuff, and Habib does an amazing job of making Todd’s resulting dilemma palpably realistic. But then something happens that flips absolutely everything on its head. And what’s really clever about the story from that point on is that, in a twisted way, it conforms to what you’re led to expect; it just does so in an upside-down way, deliberately playing with the reader’s sympathies and perceptions. It’s a quick, suspenseful read with a devilishly smart core.
I received an advance review copy of Hawk Mountain from the publisher through Edelweiss.
This novel is partly framed as the biography of Collins Braithwaite, a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’ (Braithwaite is the author’s own invention, bThis novel is partly framed as the biography of Collins Braithwaite, a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’ (Braithwaite is the author’s own invention, but his beliefs have similarities with those of R.D. Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement). That framing involves the author having been sent the notebooks of an anonymous young woman, written in the 1960s. Not only (she believes) did Braithwaite’s controversial method of ‘untherapy’ cause her sister’s suicide, but he also included an unflattering case study of her in one of his books. Armed with this knowledge, the woman starts visiting Braithwaite as a client, albeit not as herself; she creates a more worldly and seductive alter ego whom she calls Rebecca. Little does she know she’s playing right into the hands of her adversary, who believes that everyone has multiple selves. And as her story goes on, she finds it increasingly difficult to leave Rebecca on the therapist’s couch.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet pulls off the rare feat of writing two parallel narratives that are equally interesting and compelling. Braithwaite, while a repugnant character, is palpably charismatic; ‘Rebecca’ is charming and likeable in spite of (and possibly sometimes because of) her judgemental nature and tendency to fantasise. The details of Rebecca’s world are worthy of Anita Brookner or Barbara Vine, and the slow unfurling of her true nature is delectable. Having just finished Jennifer Egan’s brilliant The Candy House, I thought it would be very difficult to lose myself in a story again, but Case Study is just as engrossing.