When I was looking at books to add to my 2022 TBR shelf, I skipped over this one multiple times. I'm not really into contemporary mysteries at the moment, unless there's a unique or unusual hook to it, which was not the case here, plus the main character being described as "not like everyone else" because she struggles with social situations just screamed overdone quirkiness and second-hand embarrassment, which, again I'm not really into. But then I found out that there's a movie adaptation on the way with Florence Pugh playing the lead, and since I already know I'm going to watch that, I figured I better read the book first.
Unfortunately, my initial fears were entirely justified. Molly is... well, there's no need to sugarcoat it: she's annoying as all hell. Aggravating, even. I'm not certain what the author's intentions were, since it's never actually spelled out if she's autistic or not, but either way I don't think it was done well. In fact, for the first few chapters, I had this weird feeling like I've read this exact character before, her turns of phrase and way of speaking were so familiar, and then it hit me: she's exactly like Klara the android in Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. And, well, depicting your maybe-autistic character as essentially a robot is probably not a good idea. Every time she went on about "returning rooms to a state of perfection" I could feel myself getting more annoyed, and if I was super upset and crying and someone came up to me and said "a tissue for your issue"... well, I don't even know how I would react. I realize this might come off as harsh but for most of the book I was so annoyed with the character that I find it hard to be charitable.
The mystery aspect of the novel was also paper-thin, even with the "big twist" thrown in at the end, which didn't make much sense anyway. Here's the thing: if your protagonist's two main characteristics are overexplaining every single detail and not grasping the importance of pretty obvious stuff, for her to suddenly go like "here's in fact all the important details I deliberately concealed from the reader" in the very last chapter is pretty damn cheap. But I guess I have to give props to the author for not going with the twist I thought she would, which would have been even worse. Damn modern mystery books for making me try to figure out what the twist is going to be from practically the first page.
I didn't enjoy this book much, and the only reason I might recommend it is that it's straightforward and pretty well-written, so even when the main character is being unbelievably annoying (which is always), you can at least fly through it pretty fast without getting bogged down in unnecessary descriptions and flowery metaphors. That's not nothing. But I'm afraid I really don't know how any movie could be made from this that won't be considered at least mildly offensive, without massive changes to plot and character. Poor Florence Pugh is about to catch so much shit for taking a role "belonging" to an autistic actress... just you wait.
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése