Renée Knight

People who read a lot will know what I mean. That feeling you get when you know you’re in good hands. Whether it’s structure, pacing, dialog or just great sentences, you know it when you read it. That the author understands craft and how she wants to tell the tale. Maybe how the tale wants to be told. Renee Knight knows her stuff. There’s a definite sense of deliberation and specific choices made. If I didn’t know this was a first novel, I wouldn’t have guessed, that’s how sure show more the story feels. She has a good ear for how people talk and for how a person would write a story like this. As if they’re just telling you how things went and not trying to create some huge drama or fancy sentences. It has authority and great realism in that sense. Not quite as “insider-y” as a diary, but close.

Everyone has been jumping up and down about Girl on a Train, but this book is better. The emotional response is much greater due to the sense of dread the writer imparts. I didn’t get that with Girl on a Train. Also, the characters are more distinct, they stand out sharply against the plotline. They are revealed through what they do and say, but also by how others perceive and describe them. Catherine has a direct narrative, but is also judged and evaluated by her son, husband, coworkers and, most threateningly, by Stephen Brigstocke. Oh and then there’s you, the reader and how you judge Catherine.

There are few hints that point to the real story behind the book Catherine finds and I loved how as bits are revealed, the name of the book (A Perfect Stranger) takes on different meanings. Stephen is a palpable threat and more than a little crazy. The presence of his dead wife in his life is just one aspect of the madness that drives him to “out” Catherine and destroy her life. He’s a truly poisonous character. It’s the relentlessness of the storyline that makes the ending, for me, a bit tame and flat by comparison.

Some readers complain that if Catherine had spoken up at the beginning, nothing would have happened and there would have been no story. Well duh, most books are like that. If only this then nothing that, but it’s a story, a novel and honestly I think that if Catherine hadn’t said anything for all those years, the desire to do so couldn’t have been strong. And who knows why anyone does anything? People are inscrutable and they don’t always make good decisions. I will be reading it again, more for the words and prose itself than to find out what happens, but I think it will hold up.

Later - I am listening to it again and spoiler - I don't understand how if Jonathan's mother knew he was sick, twisted and violent, why she painted such a rosy picture of him in that book. Just over compensating? Denial? show less

Disclaimer

I am generally wary of thrillers that emerge from nowhere with terrific media hype, but my suspicions were not justified at all in the case of this book.

The book takes the form of two interspersed narratives: one written by Catherine Ravenscroft, a prize-winning producer of investigative journalism documentaries; with the other by Stephen Brigstocke, a widower and retired teacher. The book opens with Catherine in a state of shock, reeling after having started reading a book that show more she found on the bedside table in her new flat. Just a few pages in to it, she realises that the story it tells is her own, and recounts unspecified events that she has never talked about to anyone, including her husband and twenty-five year old son. She does some basic checks and establishes that the book has been privately published under a pseudonym, and is initially stumped in her desire to discover more about it. Stephen’s account, meanwhile, revolves initially around the shock he encountered after having gone through his late wife’s things and coming across a packet of old photographs of her which suggest that she had been unfaithful. He also finds her manuscript of a story which alarms him 9aalso for unspecified reasons) and inspires a deep dislike of, and wish to harm, Catherine Ravenscroft.

As the story unfolds, Catherine starts to use her experience as an investigator, and the resources available to her as a member of a film production company to try to discover who wrote the book, while Stephen develops his plans to cause her further distress. The pair end up engaged in distant stalking of each other, and the impact of their conflict draws other people in.

Ms Knight maintains the tension between the two narratives very carefully, not least because the reader is left wondering what the specific cause for the enmity is. This is very effectively and powerfully written, and all the more impressive given that it is her first novel. show less

There was good dramatic tension throughout this with the lead character describing her career of self-effacing servitude to a food-store/lifestyle/cooking mogul in flashbacks when she is recuperating at some sort of idyllic retreat (the location of which remains a secret until close to the end). The courtroom drama was also very well handled. The ending was a disappointment though when it veered into Grand Guignol territory. I had been hoping for something clever rather than diabolical.

Jesus, this book....... It starts out strong, fascinating, and gritty. The characters and subject suck you in, and keep you from putting this book down once. What transpires, soon after, is like a cudgel to the brain, swift and painful. And then, there's that fucking twist........ Rather like having your legs kicked out from underneath you, and then kicked in the balls. Twice.

Good, strong read. Likable characters(-ish), and believable plot. I'm actually glad I was too numb from the husband's show more pain/anger, to identify more closely with the wife, or I would have been left a crushed and soaking mess of feelings, and flashbacks. Since this is my first from this author, I might just have to read another novel of hers, soon.
This book was well worth the wait for it, from the library. 4 stars. show less