#i grew up on christie so this???? fucking MASTERPIECE

[eyebright-iris]

Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

What can I really say except Jesus Christ. Stuart Turton takes the beautifully preserved evening gowns and mansions and intrigue of the Golden Age of Mysteries, the era of Christie and her ilk, and picks them apart bead by bead, splinter by splinter, only to breathe new cigarette-and-perfumed life back into them.

This review will be short. This book should only be experienced, in my humble opinion, with as little knowledge as possible surrounding it. It is a masterpiece. It is spectacular, and subtle, and much like those it pays homage to, you can’t appreciate the complexity until you’ve raced through it, starting blind, slowly learning with our main character(...s?), until you’re left with a technicolour explosion of a tapestry that will make for the finest wall-decoration for the kinds of folks who like to figure these things out as they go.

(You will need post-its, pins, and red thread. No, more than that.)

Aiden Bishop awakens at Blackheath every day. He is a different person every day, his consciousness inhabiting a different guest of the Hardcastle family. He has a mission: solve the murder of the Hardcastle’s daughter, Evelyn, who will die tonight. She will die every night, unless Aiden can identify her killer. The phrase “all is not as it seems” is probably the understatement of the century here, but this book is layered perfectly, question over answer over more questions. A palimpsest, a word I’ve come to be extremely fond of after its use in another novel I loved and reviewed, The Wayward Girls.

Seven Deaths is hard to fully get your hands around to hold up to anyone else. You can’t tell them what it’s about, because if you tell anyone what a murder is really about then you’ve half-spoiled the thing. You can’t tell them anything that happens, because it only makes sense in context, and you can’t try giving any context, because, well…You see the problem. This is far from a criticism of the book - its ability to defy discussion, even recommendation, is integral to its mastery - but sometimes it’s hard to recommend a book to someone simply by waving it at them and making emphatic gestures, even if that waving and gesturing comes from someone firmly raised on Golden Age mysteries. Perhaps this review can suffice, trying to sum up everything while giving away nothing, ending up tangling in on itself while trying to follow the weft and weave of Turton’s genius.

Welcome to Blackheath, traveller. There is a question that needs answering.