Mary,
Mary eh? This is the second Mary, Mary I've read this year, the first
being the more well-known James Patterson novel. Both
crime/thrillers, this particular one severely lacked the thrilling
part of that pair.
So,
Margaret is a psychologist, she moved to New Zealand when she was
pregnant with her daughter Mary, and has just recently moved back to
Ireland to take care of her sick mother. Mary has just gone missing
and eventually her body is found dumped in a plastic sack in the
canal. The story isn't so much about Mary's disappearance as we find
out quite early on that she had died, but more about the
investigation and even more so about the repercussions after the
perpetrator is found and arrested.
Because
unlike other crime novels, this book focuses on the aftermath more so
than Mary herself, it should have had more of an impact on me that it
did. The unusual perspective was meant to spin a different story
than the ones we are used to. But whether it was the writing style or
the story itself, it just didn't grab me the way it was intended.
Margaret
herself, in my opinion doesn't come across particularly well. She
seems to have a lot of secrets. There is also an untold mystery about
her relationship with her father that we get glimpses of through
snippets of conversations with her mother. Instead of these comments
spurring me to want to find out what happened there, they just get
tiresome. For example, we find out that when her father died, her
mother didn't tell her. She was living in New Zealand at the time,
but her mother didn't tell her until after the funeral which is
something Margaret resent her for, understandably.
The
victim of the novel, Mary is very much a background character, we
find out small pieces of information about her, but nothing
substantial, again I think this was done on purpose but the effect on
me was that I just didn't really care about this missing shadow of a
person, because that's all that she was in the book.
Then of
course, we have the investigating detective in the case, Michael
McLoughlin. Could they have put a more ill-suited incompetent
detective on the case? For anyone who's seen Brendan Gleeson in the
Guard, imagine him, but drunker, stupider and also kind of a stalker.
This man really frustrated me throughout. He's in the middle of a
very unhappy marriage, which is blamed completely on the wife, even
though he is clearly a waste of space. He spends most of his time in
the pub getting drunk, oh that is when he's not following Margaret
around and spying on her house from his car when off duty. He
obsesses about this woman, about her looks, and daydreams about her,
basically falling in love with her. Bad policy for a police officer
investigating the murder of someone's daughter. His actions get
creepier the more you read, and all this adds to the story is an
uncomfortableness, as he tries to take advantage of her grief to get
close to her. He seems far more intent on getting her to love him
back than he does on trying to solve the murder. I didn't understand
at all why this was necessary to the story, and had no faith at all
in his competence as a detective because of this.
Now to
the writing, as mentioned above, this novel was set in Ireland,
specifically Dublin, now in case the reader has a very bad memory,
this is repeated constantly. It reads like it was written by someone
who has visited Dublin once and has taken down a list of all the
placenames, and Irishisms they saw and just vomited it back onto the
page. Perhaps if I didn't know Dublin even a little bit, I wouldn't
have noticed this, but the characters manage to find themselves in
every area of Dublin possible at one stage or another, they walk from
X to Y to Z for no apparent reason, seems like its just a way for the
author to remind the reader that yes, the novel is set in Dublin.
This got very annoying very quickly.
Within
the first chapter, tea is mentioned at least twice, as are pints of
stout. By the way, the book is set in Ireland, cos we love our tea and
pints...! The language used at times flows really well, but
then someone will say something in a way completely inappropriate to
the situation and then I felt pulled out of the story and compelled
to complain about it to the other half. Because of this, I couldn't
get into the rhythm of the story at all. There is a scene in it
where a photography teacher is reporting a rape to the gardai. This
report is made a long time after the event and obviously her visit to
the garda station is emotional and traumatic. She describes the
attack vividly but clearly, distancing herself from it, again
understandable, and just as the reader is getting into the scene and
feeling for this poor young woman she comes out with something like
"How do you think it's been for me here in this room with you?
To turn myself inside out like a ripe fig, let you see all those bits
which should be hidden." WHAT? A FIG? Who talks like that, is
the question I screamed at this point, again turning a very
emotional, heart-wrenching piece of writing into a piece of drivel.
I'm all for figurative writing and if this character had felt like a
fig inside her head I maybe could have accepted that, but do you
really tell a member of the police that you feel like a ripe fig in
this situaion? Maybe you do, who knows?
In
conclusion, I got quite frustrated at points throughout the book
purely based on the writing. Any sympathy you may have had for this
mysterious victim called Mary is shattered during the trial where she
is referred to as a thing by the forensics witness. This is pointed
out by Margaret herself and noted that they are trying to turn her
into a thing instead of a person, but the author has made no effort
to do otherwise with the reader.
Before
I started writing the review, I had given it a 4 out of 10, now that
I have recalled all the reasons I didn't like this book, I have
reduced that to a 1. So there you go. Will not be looking for
anymore of this author's works, as my blood pressure is high enough
already!
