While I should have been writing…
As an habitual maker of lists - to-do lists, have-done lists, lists of ideas, shopping lists - I was immediately intrigued by The List of Suspicious Things, Jennie Godfrey’s debut novel.
I read it in one gulp.
The blurb -
Yorkshire, 1979
Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South.
Because of the murders.
Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking.
Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?
So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don't.
But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families - and between each other - than they ever thought possible.
What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?
As my work-in-progress is (in part) about the impact of The Yorkshire Ripper, I couldn’t resist. Here was some reading which I could pretend counted as research as I plod on with the first draft.
Told from the point of view of a child, and somehow beautifully capturing what it’s like to be navigating a world where there’s so much you don’t understand, the novel at first appears simple - but it’s a deceptive simplicity. Very soon I was drawn into Miv’s world. It’s a novel with real emotional depth. I’m not much of a crier - when I was Miv’s age I blacked a boy’s eye because he called me soft-hearted and sentimental.
But Jennie Godfrey’s novel was really moving.
This was one of the best novels I’ve read in ages.
I read another novel this week. This was one I’d been looking forward to for ages.
I’d been waiting for it since the intriguing fallout from his first novel - The Woman in The Window. It’s not often that a bestselling debut novel is followed up by an expose of the author in the New Yorker, which makes him seem even more of an intriguing mystery than the novel.
It’s a long read - but fascinating. A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions
I did enjoy his first novel, although I had some reservations. The references to Hitchcock are enjoyable - Rear Window, obviously giving away a major plot element!, and to Vertigo, Rope and other suspense films.
And the story is narrated by Dr Anna Fox - who is clearly unreliable - relying on prescribed meds and alcohol as she tries to block out previous trauma which has left her agoraphobic. She is also vulnerable and sympathetic - even as she is in the midst of her own despair she tries to help others.
However, I didn’t quite believe in some of the major elements of the story. Even drugged and drunk, I would have expected a child psychologist to be more clued up about human nature. And the writer/narrator perpetrated all kinds of nonsense body language stuff - suggesting that lies can be detected by the direction of a person’s gaze, for instance.
Anyway, the followup was promised to be on its way back in 2019, and here it now is.
(I know, I know. As a slow writer myself, I am in a glass house. Please feel free to throw stones.)
End of Story, by AJ Finn, for me, was a disappointing follow-up to The Woman in the Window. Although I found some fault with Woman, I did find Anna a convincing and sympathetic character. Her depression and addiction and agoraphobia - they came across as a realistic response to her past trauma. So the story had a heart, even though I quibbled with the some of details.
End of Story, though. I was left cold.
I will try to avoid spoilers - and I think I can pinpoint the main problems without giving away any twists and turns.
The blurb-
"I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story."
This is the chilling invitation from Sebastian Trapp, renowned mystery novelist, to his long-time correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. Welcomed into his lavish San Francisco mansion, Nicky begins to unravel Trapp’s life story under the watchful eyes of his enigmatic wife and plainspoken daughter.
But Sebastian Trapp is a mystery himself. And maybe – probably – a murderer.
Two decades ago, his first wife and son vanished, the case never solved. Is the master of mystery playing a deadly game? If so, who will be the loser?
The main character - mystery novelist Sebastian Trapp - is a rather enigmatic character, as befits a person who is keeping so many secrets. The kind of fiction he writes, we are told, is based on Golden Age British detective fiction, set just after the first World War. There’s a nod to Dorothy Sayers - and Lord Peter Wimsey. The Count of Monte Cristo and Rebecca are also mentioned. But oddly, his main character is called Simon St John - which instantly brings to mind Simon St James, a creation of American crime writer Elizabeth George, who also writes ‘British’ crime fiction.
This novel has two narrators - and I think it works less well than the single narrator in his debut - mostly because it just interrupts the story and makes it harder to get caught up in it all.
It also feels as if it’s written in the style of Trapp’s novels - it’s a little formal and stilted at times, even though he is not the narrator. There’s a distance from the story, and a distinct lack of emotion - except right at the end.
A few peeves. There’s one point at which Trapp says to Nicky Hunter that they are in a psychological thriller - and it startled me, because it feels more like a formal puzzle mystery, albeit with some psychological aspects.
And there’s an annoying tendency to the pathetic fallacy - the ‘lavish mansion’ is very much a Gothic monstrosity, filled with stuffed animals and other oddities… and sometimes it seems these pieces have more innate emotion than the characters.
There was enough foreshadowing to be able to work out at least the major twist - however I did feel that there was a little bit of cheating. Both narrators were keeping secrets from the reader. I will have to read again to be sure, but I also think there was one plot element not properly accounted for by the end.
The novel has been compared to Knives Out - which is fair. (I didn’t much like that either, and for similar reasons)
I do think perhaps the novel could have worked better with Nicky as the sole narrator - she is certainly very much more sympathetic a character in every way. Perhaps it would also have worked better in the third person.
Meanwhile, next week more writing and less reading!
Ann
This could be Wolfie, who is one of the stars in my latest novel, Rescue Child
He was inspired by a real dog I encountered outside the co op in Saltdean some years ago. Sadly, unlike Jen who is the narrator of Rescue Child, I didn’t get to keep him.