Happy book review day, everyone! Before I get going with today's review, I want to offer a bit of a warning: the book I am reviewing today involves sexual assault. While I will not be discussing this element in detail during my review, please be aware and warned of this subject matter.
Alright, here we go:
Did you have "wine ninjas" in your community during the pandemic shut down? In early summer/ late spring, it was in our community. If you haven't heard of wine-ninja-ing, the basic idea was local women put together baskets or bags (perhaps a bottle of wine, perhaps more), chose another local woman, and dropped off the surprise gift for them. It could be anonymous, and it could include whatever you wanted.
I was "ninja'd" a few times, and did a fair bit of "ninjaing" as well. I was so excited and thankful for the generous gifts I was given!
Among the kind gifts, I was gifted a couple books. One of them was The Guilty Party by Mel McGrath.
Right away I was intrigued by the concept. One summer night at the end of a music festival, four friends are separated in a crowd. They all witness a woman in trouble - what they are witnessing becomes clear quickly. And yet. one-by-one, they all turn away. They do nothing to help.
Later, a body washes up on the banks of the Thames. Cassie, the protagonist and our narrator, knows because they did nothing, blood is on their hands. Months later the friends meet up again for a weekend at a seaside cottage, and bit by bit the events of the fateful evening are revealed. And we find out why each one made the conscious decision to do nothing.
Alright, this was a tough one to review. So I'm going to break it up into facets.
Let's start with the structure. The plot flips back and forth between the "present" - the weekend on the coast - and the evening of the assault. The "flashbacks" go back in time piece by piece, from immediately following the assault to earlier that evening prior to the festival.
I love that non-linear structure. So let's start with that. It's like a picture being revealed one bit at a time, or a puzzle coming together piece by piece. I'm (almost) a fan of non-linear plot structures, and this was a clever way to do it.
Yes, I still knew what was going to happen, and the twists were, well, not terribly surprising to me (but maybe I'm a terribly cynical person) but I think the structure helped me stick with it a bit more than if it was more straightforward, where everything would have been really rather obvious.
Now, another warning... from here on out, thar be spoilers.
Okay... Well.
Well.
Let's look at the plot concept. Four friends witness a violent rape and do nothing. Why? For me, that's a very interesting concept, and I was intrigued by it. With all the bad stuff going on in the world, especially right now, I am so interested in WHY people don't help, WHY bad things happen that can be prevented.
I figured, what an interesting concept! Something terrible is witnessed (in this case, a rape), and otherwise good people, by doing nothing, move into the realm of "bad".
And herein was my big problem with this book.
They are not otherwise good people.
Before I move forward, let's look at the characters. The Group - what they have called themselves - have been friends since college. There are four of them, consisting of two former couples. There's Cassie, our narrator, the protagonist, and probably the most sympathetic character in the book, though...
Well, I'll get to that in a minute.
Dex is her former boyfriend, who broke up with her when he came out. He's now married, and his older, wealthy husband has been diagnosed with cancer. He is struggling with this, obviously... mostly. We think. Probably? Maybe?
Then there is Bo, a wealthy app-developer who was once interested in pre-history but decided he'd rather be very wealthy and have lots of sex with lots of women instead. Man, what an interesting conflict, right? How he must feel his passions don't fit with his lifestyle...
Well... not really conflicted it seems. So..not really. Huh.
Okay, then we have Anna, Bo's former girlfriend who, in case you were wondering, is beautiful. That is her defining characteristic. She does address the pressures of being beautiful; she even is jealous of the plainer-looking Cassie, who is free to eat in front of others, or talk about sex, or dance silly, or whatever she wants, because she isn't quite a beautiful as Anna. She is also manipulative, beautiful, obsessive, beautiful, in love with Bo, and, oh yeah, beautiful.
Anna has the most potential to be interesting.
And therein is the problem. They all have the outlines of being interesting, the potential (especially Anna!), and yet, they all fall short. They all are stereotypical, flat, static characters. They are just... bad.
A character does not need to be "good" to be interesting. There are some truly interesting "bad guys" throughout literature. But they need to be complex, compelling, interesting... And these characters are just... not.
Cassie is the only one who argues about coming forward with what they saw, but as a stereotypically-passive character, she is easily swayed by the other characters. Her being traditionally "good" (at least I am pretty sure she is supposed to be good) doesn't make her more interesting, and so...
So somehow a very interesting structure, with an interesting structure, with interesting character layouts is really... not interesting.
How is this possible?
It comes down to the characters. I tell my students, my friends when we chat about books, my former writing group... pretty much everyone... that if I do not care about characters, I don't care what happens to them.
And, in the great plot vs character debate, that's where I land. This book is a perfect example of why. You need BOTH, but if you don't have a compelling character, the rest doesn't matter.
There are a few other issues with this book: some editing, and the ending that was a little too "hit-you-over-the-head-with-the-point" for me.
But at the end of the day, because of the one-dimensional element of the characters, the premise, the plot itself, falls flat. They are NOT otherwise good people who do something not-good. This isn't a mistake they live through, are conflicted about, struggle with. They do not have interesting motivations, and are not sympathetic.
And so, an interesting premise becomes stereotypical, and I was left shrugging at the events as they unfolded. Because I didn't care about the characters. So I didn't care what happened to them.
Too bad.
I didn't hate reading it. It was a light, fun summer read, but I was hoping for more from the overall idea. Since the bad decision - not helping, not coming forward, and then a whole lot more bad - comes from bad characters (or at the very least, self-obsessed ones), it doesn't say anything new or interesting, and the overall message is that bad things happen because people are self-obsessed or weak or both.
And while I don't need a happy ending, the way this was handles was kind of disappointing.
Have you read a disappointing book this year? Something with excellent potential that just didn't live up to it? Share here, or feel free to contact me via my contact page, here. And don't forget to sign up to receive my (very occasional) newsletter.
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