sunnyskywalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sunnyskywalker) wrote2022-03-19 06:49 pm
sunnyskywalker) wrote2022-03-19 06:49 pm
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Short summary: Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day in the Good Place.
Longer summary: Our narrator wakes in the forest with no memory of where or who he is. The only thing he does remember is the name “Anna.” Could she be the woman who’s shot nearby a few moments later before he can work up the courage to intervene? But the day’s about to get weirder. You know it can’t be good when he gets out of the woods to find he’s a guest at an interwar-era house party. A mysterious man in a plague doctor costume tells him that he’s going to relive this day eight times in the bodies of eight different guests, and he’ll only be allowed to leave and return to his own body if he solves the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, due to take place that night. His “hosts” aren’t just empty vessels for his mind, though—their personalities influence his own. Oh, and there’s a footman trying to murder all eight of him…
Very appropriately for this book, I’m of two minds about it. The puzzle-loving part of my mind was delighted trying to keep track of what the narrator had done when in which body. There are also some chewy questions which would be great for discussion. Who are we without our memories? How much of the narrator’s personality is consistent from host to host? How can you tell whether a dangerous person has changed enough to trust them not to hurt anyone else in the future? And murder mysteries in isolated country houses have such great atmosphere.
But a few things dampened my enjoyment. One is the totally gratuitous fat-bashing. One of his hosts is very fat, you see. He dwells quite a bit on how disgusting he finds the fat body, how pathetic it is that his host is wearing a suit one size too small out of vanity, and how gross he finds his host’s ravenous appetite and the messy way his host’s body instinctively gulps down food. Would a random person react this way? Maybe. Was there any story reason whatsoever for the author to construct this situation in the first place? No. If the narrator had dropped all of the fat-hate (or even had an initial twinge of disgust which he felt badly about and then moved on) and instead stuck to feeling frustrated by his limited mobility, eating more than in other bodies but without dripping grease or being horrified at his appetite, and worrying about the murderer instead of his fatness, this would have changed nothing. But instead, he dwells on his disgust over and over—almost more than he dwells on the horror he feels at his next host being a rapist who gets turned on by his victims’ fear. (Mercifully, he doesn’t rape anyone while in that host’s body.) You’d think one of these things would bother him a lot more than the other.
My other main dissatisfaction involves the ending. Not the mystery itself—that’s fine. Or it would be, if it had been solved by a sleuth in the usual single body. The problem is that given the setup, it’s hard to see how certain characters could have known or said what they did. I think I’d still recommend it if the time-loop puzzle aspect and questions about character change sound appealing, but problems with the ending did make it less fun for me. Spoiler time! Stop reading here if you don’t want spoilers! The next and final paragraph is full of spoilers!
So, it turns out that this is all some kind of simulation designed to rehabilitate dangerous criminals. The designers figure that making the prisoners try to solve cold cases committed by other criminals will help somehow. We don’t know what year it is really, but it must be later than 2022 to have this technology. So first I have to wonder why they’re investigating a case that’s well over a century old instead of more recent cold cases where there might still be a living murderer to catch. But more importantly, the answer turns out to be something the plague doctor never even suspected—and the simulated murderer confesses in the climactic scene. So, did the plague doctor’s superiors know enough all along to program that answer in, and the bit about actually wanting to solve the case is just a lie they tell the rank and file? Is the AI presumably involved in the simulation so smart that it figured everything out when the narrator did and adjusted the NPC murderer to add the new information? Are they only posing as a human criminal justice system and this is actually something more metaphysical? I wish I could write it off with, “Ah, but the point is the characters’ journeys, not the mechanism,” but it’s hard to do that when the person charged with managing the whole scenario is in the climax repeatedly telling you that no one had a clue about this. It makes his surprise seem important, like something that needs explanation—and we never get one. It’s frustrating. The emotional resolution about identity and change and moving on mostly works, but honestly, it's hard for me to evaluate properly when the rest of the ending is so muddled.
Longer summary: Our narrator wakes in the forest with no memory of where or who he is. The only thing he does remember is the name “Anna.” Could she be the woman who’s shot nearby a few moments later before he can work up the courage to intervene? But the day’s about to get weirder. You know it can’t be good when he gets out of the woods to find he’s a guest at an interwar-era house party. A mysterious man in a plague doctor costume tells him that he’s going to relive this day eight times in the bodies of eight different guests, and he’ll only be allowed to leave and return to his own body if he solves the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, due to take place that night. His “hosts” aren’t just empty vessels for his mind, though—their personalities influence his own. Oh, and there’s a footman trying to murder all eight of him…
Very appropriately for this book, I’m of two minds about it. The puzzle-loving part of my mind was delighted trying to keep track of what the narrator had done when in which body. There are also some chewy questions which would be great for discussion. Who are we without our memories? How much of the narrator’s personality is consistent from host to host? How can you tell whether a dangerous person has changed enough to trust them not to hurt anyone else in the future? And murder mysteries in isolated country houses have such great atmosphere.
But a few things dampened my enjoyment. One is the totally gratuitous fat-bashing. One of his hosts is very fat, you see. He dwells quite a bit on how disgusting he finds the fat body, how pathetic it is that his host is wearing a suit one size too small out of vanity, and how gross he finds his host’s ravenous appetite and the messy way his host’s body instinctively gulps down food. Would a random person react this way? Maybe. Was there any story reason whatsoever for the author to construct this situation in the first place? No. If the narrator had dropped all of the fat-hate (or even had an initial twinge of disgust which he felt badly about and then moved on) and instead stuck to feeling frustrated by his limited mobility, eating more than in other bodies but without dripping grease or being horrified at his appetite, and worrying about the murderer instead of his fatness, this would have changed nothing. But instead, he dwells on his disgust over and over—almost more than he dwells on the horror he feels at his next host being a rapist who gets turned on by his victims’ fear. (Mercifully, he doesn’t rape anyone while in that host’s body.) You’d think one of these things would bother him a lot more than the other.
My other main dissatisfaction involves the ending. Not the mystery itself—that’s fine. Or it would be, if it had been solved by a sleuth in the usual single body. The problem is that given the setup, it’s hard to see how certain characters could have known or said what they did. I think I’d still recommend it if the time-loop puzzle aspect and questions about character change sound appealing, but problems with the ending did make it less fun for me. Spoiler time! Stop reading here if you don’t want spoilers! The next and final paragraph is full of spoilers!
So, it turns out that this is all some kind of simulation designed to rehabilitate dangerous criminals. The designers figure that making the prisoners try to solve cold cases committed by other criminals will help somehow. We don’t know what year it is really, but it must be later than 2022 to have this technology. So first I have to wonder why they’re investigating a case that’s well over a century old instead of more recent cold cases where there might still be a living murderer to catch. But more importantly, the answer turns out to be something the plague doctor never even suspected—and the simulated murderer confesses in the climactic scene. So, did the plague doctor’s superiors know enough all along to program that answer in, and the bit about actually wanting to solve the case is just a lie they tell the rank and file? Is the AI presumably involved in the simulation so smart that it figured everything out when the narrator did and adjusted the NPC murderer to add the new information? Are they only posing as a human criminal justice system and this is actually something more metaphysical? I wish I could write it off with, “Ah, but the point is the characters’ journeys, not the mechanism,” but it’s hard to do that when the person charged with managing the whole scenario is in the climax repeatedly telling you that no one had a clue about this. It makes his surprise seem important, like something that needs explanation—and we never get one. It’s frustrating. The emotional resolution about identity and change and moving on mostly works, but honestly, it's hard for me to evaluate properly when the rest of the ending is so muddled.