What I’ve been reading (April/May 2024 edition) Pt.1
Some recommendations for the summer
PART ONE
The Sleepwalkers
by Scarlett Thomas (novel, 300 pages, 2024)
A newlywed couple, who had something of an unpleasant wedding, are on their honeymoon on an island in Greece, where things continue to go downhill. The hotel is strange, its owner passive aggressive. The bride either becomes paranoid and torments her husband with baseless fears, or correctly pieces together the clues about what is going on while her husband gaslights her. It is a tense and fascinating read from Scarlett Thomas, as captivating as her brilliant 2006 novel The End of Mr. Y.
It is told through the characters, via several long letters, and a few other documents. This suggests that one or more narrators are unreliable. It also means we aren’t given knowledge in real time. Some readers may feel like they’re trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, and, in many ways, they would be right.
At one moment, deep into the book, a character points the way. The only other guests we meet at the hotel are a couple who are film producers, and one of them, in a passing comment about script acquisition, claims that storytelling these days is all synecdoche and metonymy*. This is the key that unlocks how to read this book. It isn’t a thriller, really, nor a mystery, nor, as the promo tag line describes it, “Patricia Highsmith meets The White Lotus.” It is merely disguised that way, using the structures and tropes of a mystery as a way to expose the tragic lives underneath.
The Sleepwalkers is actually a character study about the long-range impact of sexual grooming and the exploitation of children, and the lifelong consequences of our choices. This isn’t fully exposed, however, until the end. Thomas (in the costume of her characters, who are telling this story) withholds all manner of important information for varying lengths of time, only providing small clues about how that information dovetails with other bits and pieces dropped along the way.
[* Synecdoche and metonymy are figures of speech. Metonymy is when something associated with a thing substitutes for that thing, such as saying ‘my ride’ for your car, or saying ‘he’s a brain’ to mean that person is intelligent. A synecdoche is a type of metonymy, where a specific part of something stands in for the entire thing, such as referring to a policeman as a ‘badge,’ or the monarch as ‘the crown,’ or a worker as a ‘hand.’]
The Loneliness Files
by Athena Dixon (memoir, 167 pages, 2023)
This is a book about solitude. About solitude that is both inadvertent and intentional. About the complexities of living alone, the good and bad of it. About how technology has simultaneously made all of us, not just the author, both more connected and more isolated than ever.
Athena Dixon's writing is poignant and candid and vulnerable, as well as fiercely intelligent and insightful. She explores modern solitude and loneliness in an attempt to understand what it means for our world and how we can make things a little better for all of us.
Reading this I was reminded of an old quote from Jean-Luc Godard (and try as I might I cannot find that quote for accuracy), where he said something along the lines of when we go to the cinema we pretend to be alone in the dark even though we are surrounded by people, and when we watch broadcast television we actually are alone in our room yet part of a huge crowd watching the same thing at the same time. It was an observation about the odd push-pull of shared experiences, the urge toward connecting with others balanced by the urge to separate from others. I felt this conflict strongly as I read The Loneliness Files. After the pandemic, constant loneliness and constant connectivity have become a way of life for so many of us.
There is plenty of existential angst here. Dixon considers, at length, the life of Joyce Carol Vincent, a young woman who died in her London flat seated in front of her television, her body not discovered for nearly three years. Vincent had been pulling back from everyone who knew her, such that no one thought to check on her all that time. Dixon wonders, Could that happen to me? Could it happen to any of us in today’s fragmented world, where screens and digital networks have taken the place of seeing each other in the town square on a Sunday afternoon? If I stopped posting on social media, would anyone notice that I was gone?
The Hunter
by Tana French (novel, 474 pages, 2024)
In the 2021 novel The Searcher, Tana French left behind her Dublin Murder Squad series and introduced us to Cal Hooper, a retired American police detective from Chicago who moves to an Irish village to start a new, quieter life. There Hooper became embroiled in a new mystery, thanks to a nearly feral girl named Trey, and found himself out of his depth in a picturesque town with plenty of dark secrets.
The Hunter is a direct sequel, and again the story is driven by Trey. She is the hunter of the title, out to get revenge on some of the villagers, biding her time. The reappearance of her ne’er-do-well father, and the get-rich-quick scheme he’s running, provides her an opportunity. She’s clever and keeps her eye on her objective no matter what happens, without fear of consequences or the collateral damage that might result.
The book is full of richly drawn characters and a story that quickly becomes unpredictable. You can feel the unusually hot summer that envelopes the area, and the stress the weather puts upon the farmers who never stop worrying about the impact to their crops and livestock.
But mostly it is the dialogue that makes this book such a pleasure. The author is Irish and I assume the slang-filled language is accurate, but exaggerated or not I could listen to these locals talk all day. The conversation sings with hostilities and conflict nestled in the humor and ornate pleasantries. This is a long book, and the pacing can be slow sometimes, but who cares when I can eavesdrop on dialogue like this?
My Murder
by Katie Williams (novel, 304 pages, 2023)
This is a unique, well-handled blend of murder mystery and science fiction. Lou is a wife and a mother, living a normal suburban life. She is also the victim of a serial killer, murdered while she was out jogging. New technology enabled her to be brought back to life, in a way, and she joins with the other victims in therapy. Lingering questions remain about her murder, and she is drawn into investigating who actually killed her, and why. She knows as well as we do that the answers are not likely to be pleasant.
My Murder is a fascinating story about second chances, lessons learned, and the priorities in our lives. It offers an interesting lens on motherhood and marriage. It has surprises in store, even though it is not a fast-paced thriller or investigative procedural. In fact, the mystery is told from very much the domestic perspective of Lou and her husband and her friends. It mixes satire, humor, and fantasy, with a little body horror and existential dread. There are tropes here, but mutated, disrupted, turned inside out; the results can be clever or funny or chilling, depending. I found it fun and creepy at the same time, which is a nice balance!