book review: our kind of cruelty

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall
MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 288 pp.
Published May 8, 2018

This is a love story. Mike’s love story.

Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet, if lonely life, before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return, Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy. He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job, he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together.

It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his emails or phone calls.
It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus.

It’s all just part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move he’ll know just when to come to her rescue…

A spellbinding, darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception, Our Kind of Cruelty introduces Araminta Hall, a chilling new voice in psychological suspense.

book review: the alienist

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Random House, 496 pp.
Published March 15, 1994

Summary (via Goodreads): The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.

Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences.

book review: the chalk man

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor
Crown Publishing, 280 pp.
Published January 9, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads): In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he's put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank--until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

My thoughts: The Chalk Man adds up to a bag as thoroughly mixed as the sweets sacks Eddie and his friends buy at the town shop. Certain elements—a darker tone, morally ambiguous yet realistic characters—suggest a superior mystery read, while others—inconsistent writing and an overly complicated plot—conspire to make this one of the more frustrating books I've picked up this year. Ultimately the positives outweighed the negatives, particularly when taking into account this is a first outing for Ms. Tudor. She has a knack for the unsettling and macabre that bodes well for future novels, as she settles into a style of writing and storytelling that suits her (and her readers) best.

All of The Chalk Man's characters exist somewhere south of moral goodness. Narrator Eddie stays consistently off-putting, as an adult. Not in a blatantly villainous way—he reminds me of any number of old schoolmates whose lives never matched up to the glory of their youth. It's here that the alternating timelines of 1986 and 2016 work their magic, keeping him from discouraging any reading progress; by getting to know Eddie as a child, the shortcomings and character flaws of middle age feel grounded in experience. Despite the gap of thirty years you can trace connections from the (sometimes traumatic) events of his adolescence all the way through to his semi-alcoholic, off-kilter adulthood. The remainder of his gang elicit various degrees of sympathy, with the sole girl member strongly reminiscent of Beverly Marsh from It. The eerie new teacher in town, susceptible to teasing due to albinism, strikes a great balance between creepiness and awkward loneliness.

An abundance of characters may have proven too much a temptation. In addition to the murder in 1986, several other subplots churn beneath the surface. Some bear direct and pressing relevance to the central crime, while others dangle too loosely and feel like a distraction. Additionally, Ms. Tudor's prose was sometimes quite choppy. I found myself backtracking a few sentences to tease out an unclear thought or action more often than I would like, particularly since none of the passages in question concerned the twistiest aspects of the plot. She also makes ample use of a writing device I find sophomoric. Several chapters end on cliffhangers (which I don't mind at all!) only to tack on an ominous allusion to revelations in later chapters. It's a heavy-handed device better suited to children's books, rather than adult fiction.

The Chalk Man unquestionably sticks its landing, though. I cannot remember the last time a book's final chapter dropped my jaw like this, all while fitting in perfectly with the tone and foreshadowing of the preceding pages. (Gone Girl, maybe? In shock level, not content.) Those last five pages almost eradicate the shortcomings of the previous 275...almost.

For those who enjoy their mystery/thrillers on the decidedly darker side, The Chalk Man fits the bill. A couple of late-developing twists help to elevate it above its peers, although inconsistent writing and a tendency towards over-plotting make Ms. Tudor's debut novel feel longer than it really is. There's enough here to recommend it for genre fans, and I'm looking forward to seeing how her style matures over time.

RATING: ★★★

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book review: the english wife

The English Wife by Lauren Willig
St. Martin's Press, 384 pp.
Published January 9, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads): From the New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Willig, comes this scandalous New York Gilded Age novel full of family secrets, affairs, and even murder.

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor manor in England, they had a whirlwind romance in London, they have three year old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and renamed it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

My thoughts: Initially, I found the structure of The English Wife off-putting. Two narratives, which begin several years apart and slowly converge, unfold simultaneously: the murder mystery of Bay and (perhaps) his wife Annabelle, taking place in the early months of 1899, investigated by his sister Janie; and, beginning in 1894, the development of Bay and Annabelle's relationship from their first meeting in England. Independently revealing Mr. and Mrs. Van Duyvil's courtship solves one allegedly central mystery—the identity of "George"—in the book's early chapters. Surely, I thought, Ms. Willig would not advertise such a major plot point on the book jacket only to render it moot a dozen pages in?

My concern was quite unnecessary. The question of George's identity serves as mere introduction to an increasingly complex web of lies, half-truths, and self-deceptions that entangles the Van Duyvil family. It all veers towards pulpy excess: broken engagements and infidelity, rumored incest, and the possibility of assumed identity seem a stretch for one family to endure. Well-paced revelations, layered evenly throughout the story, help mitigate the outlandishness. I'm unfamiliar with Ms. Willig's body of work, however reading a few summaries of earlier novels would suggest that she specializes in larger-than-life plots. The English Wife certainly delivers in that vein.

In contrast, her two leading ladies mature with a welcome nuance. Janie and Annabelle develop into mirror images of one another, their journeys separated by years, in the novel's most satisfactory development. To go into greater detail risks spoiling several twists and turns. Suffice to say, both women find a constrained sort of strength as they seek autonomy while still moving in the circles of the Gilded Age American elite. They also embody different sides of feminine strength (without the tired "I'm wearing pants instead of a dress, so I'm a Strong Female Character" trope) that makes them relatable across a wide audience. Only one supporting character—a long-lost cousin—devolves into soap operatics, although thankfully his presence is minimal.

Ms. Willig also captures the time period vividly. Some period phrases or words require context clues or a quick search to translate, but they only help to build an evocative portrait of the Gilded Age. Her descriptive prose will delight any period drama fan, yet it always flows smoothly so as not to impede the story's progression.

The English Wife is a perfect winter equivalent to a beach read— curl up under a blanket with some tea on a chilly day and escape the mundane. Its bounty of twists may strain credulity by the end, but Ms. Willig provides a satisfactory solution to each mystery and lets her readers have a great deal of fun unraveling them all along the way.

RATING: ★★★

Check out my other Book of the Month reviews here!