Dear Abi, or the Ultimate Unreliable Narrator

 "As for myself, I belong to that delicious subgenre, the self-confessed unreliable narrator." - Matt Coward

Back in 2021 I wrote here about Stuart Turton's remarkable first novel, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.  (Leigh also wrote about it later.)  Turton is a master of mash-ups or genre-blendings, so let's call that book a fantasy novel braided together with a golden-age-style mystery.

I also enjoyed, but never wrote about his second book, The Devil and the Dark Water, which is sort of a seafaring historical mystery with horror overtones.

I just finished his third novel, and it's an amazing tale.  The Last Murder at the End of the World is a science fiction mystery.  It is set hundreds of years in the future (I had to keep reminding myself of that when futuristic technology is used) when all animal life on earth has been wiped out except on an island in the Mediterranean where a village of a few hundred people remain. 

 

When one of the residents  is murdered solving it could literally mean life or death for  the whole planet.  And since their memories of the past night have been wiped - futuristic technology - even the killer doesn't know whodunit.  Fortunately one of the villagers is uniquely qualified to do the detective work.  There is a breathtaking scene in which Emory, the sleuth, looks at a scene of utter chaos and immediately deduces what happened.  Nice piece of writing.

But what fascinated me most about the book is the narration style.  Most of the book is in third person, the classic omniscient narrator who can tell us all the actions and thoughts of the characters.  But every once in a while, well, take a look:

She remembers being out there when she was a girl, hearing this same lesson from the same teacher. She cried the entire way and nearly jumped out to swim for home when they dropped anchor.

"The children are safe with Niema," I say reassuringly.

Say what? Who is this first person narrator suddenly intruding, one who can tell us what the characters are thinking?

Her name, it turns out, is Abi (and I think I was halfway through the book before her gender was mentioned). She can see through the eyes of the villagers, talk with them through their thoughts and, to some extent, control them.

So, who or what is Abi? Obviously that is one of the puzzle boxes that the reader hopes will  be opened before the end of the book.  

But now we're getting to my main point.  Abi sometimes tells us that she is lying to the villagers.  But does she tell us every time she does? Can we  trust anything she is telling us?  

This is a terrific book but not without flaws.  The last quarter is so convoluted you practically need a flowchart and map to track Who is Where When.  And there is something which is described as a major clue which feels to me like an error an editor should have caught.

But it is a stunning read.