I just got around to reading THE 7 1/2 DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE by Stuart Turton. It’s confusing at the beginning, and gets both more and less confusing as you go along. Does that sound strange? Wait ’til you read the book!
I can generally take or leave stories in which the narrative character has amnesia; it’s hard to do well. Roger Zelazny set the bar with NINE PRINCES IN AMBER, but Turton’s book is right up there with it.
And the writing is fantastic. Check out the opening line:
I forget everything between footsteps.
BOOM! Instant amnesia. He still has feelings, impulses, reactions, and character traits, some of which don’t seem in sync. That’s because “he” is tasked with finding out who committed the murder that’s going to happen that evening, and he’s to do so inside someone else’s body. Are his feelings, impulses, reactions, and character traits his, or those of his host body? Some of each, and he begins to sort them out as he awakes every morning into the same rainy day in a different host body. To make things more difficult (or does it make it easier?), the hosts don’t awake in chronological order: One day his host wakes late in the morning, and another day he wakes earlier than he previous host. There’s at least one other person in the same condition, but she lives the same day over and over in the same host, so he has to coordinate what she knows when, and …. Trust me, it ROCKS!
Here’s one of my favorite lines, our introduction to “Dr. Dickie”:
I open the door to find a huge gray mustache on the other side.
I’m telling you, Turton’s language and style delight on every page.
It’s been picked up by Netflix UK as a limited series, and I’m hoping hoping hoping to see it soon! They changed the title to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but I don’t know what happened to the extra 1/2 death. I guess they rounded down.
In honor of the weather in the book, my nails are weather-y this week.
The light blue base polish is pop-arazzi’s The Hue Is Blue, the very dark blue base polish and stamping polish is Maniology’s Cosmos, and the rain is Maniology’s Bam! White. The rain and wind came from Maniology’s MXM078, and the WEATHER collection came from Maniology’s MXM279.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Weather, specifically rain.
MA
Dan Antion
June 13, 2022 at 8:06amInteresting nails, and it sounds like an interesting book.
Marian Allen
June 13, 2022 at 9:19amThe book is a wild ride, and well worth it.
bikerchick57
June 13, 2022 at 8:09amThe book sounds really interesting, Marian. I will have to put it on my list, which has been growing lately. Have you ever read “Before I go to Sleep” by S.J. Watson? It’s about an amnesiac, but it’s also an excellent thriller. I could barely put it down when I read it years ago.
Marian Allen
June 13, 2022 at 9:21amI haven’t heard of it, but I’m going to look it up now. Another brilliant amnesiac treatment is SOLDIER OF ARETE by Gene Wolfe. It’s a fantasy set in ancient Greece, if memory serves. The narrative character forgets everything overnight, every night; the text of the book is a notebook he keeps so he doesn’t lose everything each and every morning.
bikerchick57
June 13, 2022 at 9:44amThat is similar to Before I Go to Sleep. Christine forgets everything from the day before when she sleeps. But it’s a good read.
Marian Allen
June 13, 2022 at 9:25amBought!
Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt
June 13, 2022 at 3:02pmHaving enough trouble keeping my own sequence straight! But I’m sure I’ve read at least one book with this premise. Just can’t remember which one it was: a woman leaves notes and videos for herself. IIRC, she might have been the murderer. Or her husband, who wasn’t really her husband was. Or something like that. Maybe it was a movie…
If I didn’t write my fiction down, I wouldn’t remember it. It’s so much fun going back and reading what I wrote.
Marian Allen
June 14, 2022 at 10:14amSounds compelling, whichever it was!