Apropos of something
Jul. 10th, 2014 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiI finished listening to the audiobook of Laura Lippman's I'd Know You Anywhere yesterday. It's superb, made even better by Linda Emond's near-perfect narration.
Like many of Lippman's standalone novels, it's a nontraditional mystery/thriller; the "thriller" element exists mostly in flashback (where we know the overall outcome, just not the awful details), while the present-day events are mostly about emotional tension than any immanent danger (and there's certainly never any doubt about whodunit).
One thing I found interesting was that the convicted killer at the center of the novel is obsessed with saving his life by focusing intently on one basic point of minutia, to the exclusion of all else; he's not concerned with the morality of his own actions, or making amends, or even if anyone has been hurt. He wants to focus on something small, and only if it's interpreted the way he wants. Anything that makes him the monster he actually is, he denies. Anything that focuses on any of the much bigger things, he ignores and shunts off.
It's a fascinating mix of hyperfocus and denial, and reveals as much about him as almost anything else. Of course, in this book, the same character is practicing both the denial and the evil acts he's denying, but it's equally fascinating to watch those who defend and rationalize things take this approach.
Anyway, damned fine book. Not quite as good as this year's After I'm Gone (an often gorgeous story of the disappearance of a Jewish mobster in '70s Baltimore, and the impact he has on his wife and three daughters over the ages), but utterly gripping.
Like many of Lippman's standalone novels, it's a nontraditional mystery/thriller; the "thriller" element exists mostly in flashback (where we know the overall outcome, just not the awful details), while the present-day events are mostly about emotional tension than any immanent danger (and there's certainly never any doubt about whodunit).
One thing I found interesting was that the convicted killer at the center of the novel is obsessed with saving his life by focusing intently on one basic point of minutia, to the exclusion of all else; he's not concerned with the morality of his own actions, or making amends, or even if anyone has been hurt. He wants to focus on something small, and only if it's interpreted the way he wants. Anything that makes him the monster he actually is, he denies. Anything that focuses on any of the much bigger things, he ignores and shunts off.
It's a fascinating mix of hyperfocus and denial, and reveals as much about him as almost anything else. Of course, in this book, the same character is practicing both the denial and the evil acts he's denying, but it's equally fascinating to watch those who defend and rationalize things take this approach.
Anyway, damned fine book. Not quite as good as this year's After I'm Gone (an often gorgeous story of the disappearance of a Jewish mobster in '70s Baltimore, and the impact he has on his wife and three daughters over the ages), but utterly gripping.