This one’s a bit of a puzzle box, and the part of the plot that kept catching my attention wasn’t even the main event. Faye Heron, a Hollywood triple threat, comes back to her old Adirondacks college for the funeral of her mentor, PT, a film professor whose sudden heart attack appears like the first domino in a much messier game. Reading Jessica Knoll’s acknowledgments, in which she talks about her beloved teacher dying mid-lecture, added a touching undercurrent to the whole book for me. I wished she had added those at the beginning, as it would have highlighted my feelings about the book right from the start. While reading it I kept wondering how much of the story was drawn from the author's own experiences. The book felt so infused with the author's presence that I struggled to lose myself in the narrative, which made it a bit less absorbing.
In the Adirondacks, Faye reconnects with Henry Spalding, PT’s nephew and her old college flame; their relationship definitely left a scar, one that Faye enjoys picking at. He thinks she dumped him for Hollywood, then roasted him on TV for good measure. But their relationship was so toxic that Faye sees it as a necessary harrowing escape. Now he’s back, married with children, and seemingly uninterested, until he drugs her and locks her up in his remote cabin. The need for control, the hinge of the entire book, keeps flipping back and forth as secrets and blackmail start to bubble up. Who really has the power?
And this is what points to the other layer, too. Control is what the book is about. Control of the narrative, especially. Now, in the other part of the story, Faye’s marriage is on the rocks, tangled up with her career and her agent (who, awkwardly, is also her husband’s agent). She’s stuck, torn between drive and desire, and maybe the only way out is to mine her own past for new material. Like she did before. Underneath the thriller beat, there’s this raw, unsettling meditation on ownership. A story about who gets to tell whose story, and what it costs.The ultimate question every writer struggles with. How much can you use from other people's lives? And does the truth matter? The Hollywood stuff, the adaptation drama, I couldn't dismiss the feeling when reading it that this came across as deeply personal, almost confessional. That gives the book its depth, but it also steals a little of the pure, nerve-wracking thrill I crave from a mystery. I wasn’t, for example, that interested in who killed PT. By the end, it felt like Knoll herself was more interested in those questions about truth and ambition than in the whodunit. It is certainly a book that will stay with me. Lots of readers mention the toxic relationship, the sex, the coercion, but I was much more interested in the Hollywood part. It seems to be full of disillusionment, but it also has a strong satirical edge. And I can't wait to see this book on the screen, it couldn't be a more perfect book for adaptation. A French Lieutenant's Woman for the modern age. So yes, I missed that all-consuming thriller rush. But I was intrigued and couldn’t help admiring the style. Knoll writes with bite, and the questions she raises are sticky. Definitely a book club goldmine!
