Small Impressions: 'Every Vow You Break', by Peter Swanson (2021)

 

This was a quick read.  The strong characterisation of the heroine kept it going.  A very satisfying mix of a horror film of a folk horrorish kind (a bit Wicker Man, a bit Ben Wheatley), and a last girl survival slasher.  

SPOILERS

Tiny Summary: A woman is honeypotted on her bachelorette weekend and is later taken to a remote island on her honeymoon, where it becomes clear she's going to be punished, somehow.

Lots of people have mentioned the way the novel 'tries to be feminist but comes off as misogynist', and I totally see how they could think that.  I've been raised on horrors, mostly made by men, glorifying in the beauty, fear of and hatred for women, all mushed up together.  The psychology of all that is scary and fascinating.  This book didn't have 'horror', no gratuitous blood, only clear descriptions of events.  In that sense it wasn't horror, it was a psychological thriller.  I didn't feel it was hostile to women.  I did feel it captured the sort of feelings toward women some men have; at the end it tried to contextualise them a bit (mentioning seminars, mens rights movements etc), but it wasn't forensic, just indicatory.

I give it 5 stars because after a slightly slow beginning, it held me totally and I put off meals, family time and sleep to finish it.  It was very clear and coherent, I didn't lose suspension of disbelief at any time...except right near the end when she escapes and the rich men don't manage to cover her up, buy off ...whoever.  

Maybe it's just the world we are in, or the world the news shows us, but I feel she wouldn't have made it; money would have bought her silence by someone coming for her, her disappearence or her discrediting as a witness.  I don't beleive justice will have occurred, were this a real situation.  But maybe that's simply the triumph of the news...it makes us give up, give in. Not believe anything can change.

Maybe the end is Swanson giving us hope? Maybe it's a false hope, a lulling into a false sense of security...that a lone woman could survive a set up like that?  I don't know.  But it was a good thriller. I liked the last line:

Beasts had come for her.  And she was still alive.

(Smaller version of this, on my GoodReads page.)

Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022)

 

This was amazing.  I didn't feel very well (long working summer exhaustion), and started randomly reading this after being taken with the title and off kilter cover art.

I couldn't stop reading and finished a day later.  It's about the deep sea, what might be there.  The love between two people, two women, the little everyday things.  The parents you don't understand and can't get through to but love anyway.  The failure of communication in its many ways.

The haunting of grief.  How people can not be dead, but already gone.  (Like when my now dead ex husband had a stroke and was forever after like a cousin of himself, definitely related but utterly not the same person as before.)  Relearning a new person, and what they might need, against what you need.

I still think that one of the roots of horror as a genre are in the horror of the (relatively) well when faced with regular caring for or being in close proximity to a chronically ill person, a person slowly changing beyond recognition to you or themselves or both. Fear of contagion, mentally and physically. Fear of permeability, of fragmentation, dissolving.

The story and it's characters were lyrical and brisk, clear and straight. The voices of Leah and Miri were so strong, so likeable.  Pieces of a world already gone when the book begins.  Story of a love story over except for one last act.

I felt the echoes of so many films in this, as I'm sure was intended. "It's going to be alright now/it'll be alright now" echoed straight from Paranormal Activity, near the end, when Katie's voice doubles. Many loving references to Jaws. Many others.

I haven't been this engaged with a book in months.  If you like your horror/ghost stories a bit literary, a bit sad, strange, about women loving each other, and incidentally learning a lot more about something you didn't know loads about before (here the sea), you will not be disappointed.  Very much recommended.

 ***

(This review is also up on my Goodreads, but with less words!)

Idol, Burning by Rin Usami (2020 originally) - small and perfect

 

I don't want to say anything about the plot of this book.  It's an amazing character portrait of a lonely girl and what she spends her time and mind doing. One of those books where if you looked at the character from the outside they would seem weird and make little sense.  But inside the character, there's reasons for it all, coping mechanisms. The end was wonderfully ambiguous.

This was so good.  Exploring things that can't be held, or quantified.  The choice of what to try to hold on to and what you never could hold in the first place.  The confusion of everyday life and demands. The mess.  The difference in tone between a life lived and a life blogged - one so alone and not understanding, the other so casual and confident.  The reasons for obsession. Its a tiny little masterpiece.