I have to say, I was expecting a murder mystery when I read the title of this book and the blurb on the back. I was not expecting an existential tale of a woman losing her mind in three days. It starts off insidiously enough with an older woman finding a note on a secluded path which admits to someone being aware of a murder. You start to believe that this is going to be an exciting tale of an ordinary woman solving the riddle of who killed a girl, but then you reach a point when you realize there never was a girl or a murderer. You get attached to the story that the old woman makes up in her head, you want to know more about the girl that she is conjuring up. She makes the girl sound intriguing, you want to know why she was murdered, and by who, and where her body is. But none of it is real. It was honestly pretty disappointing for me.
Besides being disappointed in the lack of an actual murder mystery, I was left wanting to know more about the main character, Vesta. The little bits we learn about her life before she moved to this desolate town leaves you curious, especially with regards to her vivid imagination. That she comes up with this story about a girl so quickly and dreams up all these intricate little details about her life is extraordinary. But if you consider that she is quite alone and lonely, and is quite possibly going mad, then the fact that she is imagining everything isn’t quite so amazing. The mind can go to strange places when your days are empty and you don’t have anything to look forward to. On top of the fact that she seems to resent the life her recently deceased husband forced her to live, coupled with the fact that at her age there is not a lot of hope to live out her forgotten dreams, it’s no wonder that she becomes absolutely insane.
I’d recommend this book for deep thinkers, because I was certainly wondering about the state of Vesta’s mind. This book may only appeal to people who are interested in life’s deep questions and psychology, because I think the only way I was able to find a certain enjoyment in this book was by trying to work out what was happening to her mind and how a professional would diagnose her mental illness. I’ve read better existential crisis type books, so I don’t think I am going to save this one for my collection. And a final thought, not being a huge fan of this book has not deterred me from being curious about the author’s other novels, I am looking forward to reading something else by this woman.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 