See What I Have Done, by Sarah Schmidt

Loved loved loved this. Is there anything more maddeningly delicious than a real life murder mystery that was never satisfyingly solved?

The book begins with “Someone’s killed Father”. Yes. Yes they have. Killed him so hard that apparently his eyeball was cleaved in two. Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death with an axe in their home in Fall River, MA on August 4, 1892 at some time between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. It is believed that Abby was killed first and then Andrew, though Andrew was the first to be found. Their bodies were discovered separately- Abby was upstairs and Andrew was on a sofa in his office. Andrew's youngest daughter Lizzie was arrested for the murders and spent 10 months in jail. After an 90 minutes' deliberation, the jury acquitted her of Murder. Nobody else was ever formally tried as a suspect.

Personally, I had never heard this rhyme, but apparently it is quite prevalent:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Sarah Schmidt spins an oppressive, heat soaked narrative of the Borden Murders, creating a disturbing and dysfunctional picture of family life; an unhappy collection of people forced under one roof, plagued by rivalry, resentment, paranoia and generally very unhealthy relationships. Andrew Borden, though wealthy, is incredibly frugal, a self made man but despised in the business world. Abby, step-mother to the girls is hated by them both, despite getting along well when they were young. They are stiff, formal, apparently insular. They do not seem to connect.

Firstly, the writing is absolutely beautiful. It's eerie and oppressive and visceral in that music-box-music-playing-too-slowly kind of way. It gets under your skin and possesses you and is utterly, utterly compelling.

The story is told using the multiple narrators format and this is an absolute textbook example of 1) how this should be done and 2) what kind of effect can be created when used properly. The perspective shifts between the childish, coddled Lizzie, her neglected, put upon sister Emma, maid of all work Bridget who just wants to GTF out of there and ne'er do ruffian Benjamin, an associate of Lizzie and Emma's uncle. We see Lizzie through the eyes of strangers, the people closest to her, and from her own perspective. It's a fascinating examination of a very unusual woman. The narrative moves through time seamlessly, examining the day of the murder in forensic detail, sliding to the day before, then jumping forward 10 years to the trial and acquittal of Lizzie Borden. Each narrator has a distinctive, tangible personality and voice, each one is a living, breathing person, detailed and with depth, earnestly committing their memories to the page. Their voices are distinct, and unique, their stories are there to be believed or discredited.

The characters then. Lizzie and Emma are just so fascinatingly messed up. Lizzie is the most unreasonable, manipulative person, she completely controls Emma's life and influences her parents' opinions of her. Despite their ages, both sisters still live at home, simmering in their co-dependency and bitterness, never allowing the other to break away. Emma wants to escape, had the chance to get married, but Lizzie would never allow her to go. The Lizzie of this novel comes across as greatly infantilised, spoiled, spiteful and tempestuous, while Emma is bitter, forgotten, longing to escape the family home. She feels responsible for Lizzie, enables her behavior and tries to keep her happy for ease's sake. I was especially fond of Bridget - she seemed to be the narrator with the best assessment of the situation. Trusting nobody, keeping her head down, she seemed to slip unnoticed through the Bordens' house, keeping her accumulating impressions quiet and biding her time. I think she best represents the reader, the outsider, the person with the best objective view. She knows from the beginning that the Bordens are odd, and we see how manipulative they can be from her several attempts to leave, their constant retention of her.

As the narrative progresses, there are surprises, the introduction of unlikely characters, witnesses and developments. Lizze's account of her movements changes, the murder weapon is lots, a sinister Uncle lurks around the house. There is lots of vomit. We are thrown a possibility, sent off in certain directions. However, the book has decided its killer, and its fascinating to see that net close around the characters, to see how they change as suspicion turns to confession. I love historical fiction when it uses real history as its skeleton- easier to mess up, sure, but when someone gets it right, it is *the best* fiction. It put me in mind of The Haunting of Hill house, two co-dependent, sisters, one socially stunted and possibly a killer, the other trying desperately to carry on as normal, shielding her sister yet quietly terrified...also of Alias Grace, as there's that idea that truth, innocence, guilt and identity are very slippery, subjective things and that the same events viewed through different eyes will reveal different things. I loved the inclusion of the timeline and the will excerpts at the end- it just underline the factual elements of the book. So this might be a fictionalised account, but these murders happened, these people were real, the lived lives and had motives and they alone know why they behaved in the way they did.

I would absolutely recommend this to crime readers, to Real Crime fans, to anybody and everybody that loves an unsolved, much speculated about historical mystery. Lizzie is a compelling and fascinating character, her dysfunctional family home the perfect incubator for her obsessions and questionable sanity. I loved the sultry prose, all sweaty backs and heat haze, over-ripe pears and stifling rooms. It really is a stunning debut, executed perfectly, if you'll pardon the pun.

Seeing, by José Saramago

Despite the heavy rain, the presiding officer at Polling Station 14 finds it odd that by midday on National Election day, only a handful of voters have turned out.

Puzzlement swiftly escalates to shock when eventually, after an extension, the final count reveals seventy per cent of the votes are blank - not spoiled, simply blank. National law decrees the election should be repeated eight days later. The result is worse; eighty-three per cent of the votes are blank. The incumbent government receives eight per cent and the opposition even less. The authorities, seized with panic, decamp from the capital and place it under a state of emergency.

In his new novel, José Saramago has deftly created the politician's ultimate nightmare: disillusionment not with one party, but with all, thereby rendering the entire democratic system useless. Seeing explores how simply this could be achieved and how devastating the results might be.

I read Blindness, Saramago's most famous (and also amazing) novel in 2013 and did not realise until half way through that this is the sequel. Perhaps a closer look at the titles would've illuminated me. Anyhow.

Seeing takes place in the same nameless city of the same nameless country (Portugal in mentioned, purely as an example). Only this time, the epidemic that seems to be sweeping across the nameless capital is political apathy. Political apathy which is confusing, unexplained and dangerous. Therefore it is swiftly upgraded to domestic terrorism; the city evacuated by the authorities and placed in a state of siege to sweat it out. The remorseless, treacherous inhabitants will stew until they are sorry.

The first part of the book is back and forth squabbling between the interior minister, the prime minister, the president and the exterior minister. All are, initially, aware that casting a blank vote is not an illegal act- what is and is not illegal is conveniently irrelevant during a state of siege. Good idea. After much discussion, observation of the chain of command, faffing about what should and should not be done and generally demonstrating perfectly why powerful men are essentially useless, the government seems to conclude that the people trapped within the city, 83% of whom cast blank votes, are enemies of the republic, miscreant anarchists with no respect for democracy or civilization. They declare them to have brought this all on themselves, with their savage, conspiratorial ways and the chaos and villainy that befalls them is their fault alone. Logic is the first casualty of this particular position. Truth swiftly follows. They have no plan. They have no sense. They have no courage or morality. They are politicians. They retreat, set up a border and see what happens.

After a period of siege, during which the besieged go about their business in a bemused, non violent and positively collaborative way, the government receive a letter. It it a letter from the first blind man, who four years ago fell in with a woman who retained her sight through the blindness epidemic. He tells of her leadership, her bravery, the fact that she did not go blind. Seizing this non existent connection between the previous and the current epidemic, the increasingly paranoid Governments gets a bee in its bonnet about bringing to justice the person that they believe to be the ringleader of this corrupting war on democracy- the doctor's wife. There is nobody else it could be; they will find the evidence to prove her guilt and expose her as the cold hearted criminal kingpin that she is.

The second part of the novel is three police officers, a superintendent, an inspector and a sergeant conducting an investigation into the supposedly suspicious activities of the doctor, the doctor's wife, the girl with dark glasses and the man with an eye patch, the first blind man's ex wife and the dog of tears. The first blind man, he that wrote the letter, is not under suspicion, being a patriotic informer. He probably cast a valid vote. The boy with the squint cannot be traced.

Personally, I found this second section much easier to read. The internal struggle of the superintendent is kind of heart breaking to witness. He has been explicitly ordered to conduct an investigation, and implicitly (though no less clearly) told what its outcome is expected to be. To see a man wrestle with what is obviously a very finely tuned conscience is grim; to see him still try to stick to his moral code and be good at his job. I got quite attached to the superintend ant and his fatherly stewardship of his subordinates. I liked that he was occasionally insecure about his decisions, endearingly methodical and occasionally quite grumpy, but he's the novel's hero really. He sees the goodness in the doctor's wife from the first moment and his quest for evidence against her dies quickly.

Written in Saramago's margin to margin text, disregarding most punctuation and dialogue conventions, Seeing is a slow burner. The squabbling politicians, though deplorable and eye-rollingly, infuriatingly familiar, are never exactly exciting and are (I think) intentionally interchangeable. The novels is a fascinating and depressingly accurate satire on the ineptitude of politicians and their obsessive need to point the finger, to be seen to be solving things. To get their bravado on and be Big Men. Their hell-bent determination to pursue a pointless, destructive, impossible plan and to expect demand, the pie-in-the-sky outcomes that they dreamed up is bitterly recognisable.

The end of this book is just so horrifyingly unjust. So abrupt and unsatisfying. Not in a badly written, structural way, but in a "That's life, what's now?" kind of way. I'd love to know what the government did next. Their master plan- so expensive, so ill thought out, so destructive and morally bankrupt, has demonstrably failed. Now what? How are they going to manipulate their populace, now the crowds and even the papers have failed to back their crazy movement? It's that spiral of increasing desperation on the part of the powerful, decreasing influence on the part of the 99%.

If you have not read Blindness, definitely do that first. Then feel the impotent rage after you finish Seeing.