I often think life is just a performance. None of this is real. It's a pretense at reality, that's all. Only when someone, or something, we love dies, do we wake up from the play-and see how artificial it all is-this constructed reality we inhabit.
The Fury
by Alex Michaelides
Genre: Mystery Thriller
About: An isolated island. A beloved celebrity. A grisly murder. This has the recipe for a perfect murder mystery but, as our narrator makes clear: this is no Agatha Christie. He's going to tell it to us straight, everything that happened on that island and all the events before that doomed them all.
Thoughts
I thought this was really refreshing. The narrator reads like a character from an Oscar Wilde play and constantly teases the reader with the promise of a truly shocking story. We know a murder is going to happen but the build up is tantalisingly slow. I both wanted to know everything and also loved being teased in such different ways that I didn't mind waiting.
Michaelides really plays around with the mystery conventions. It's fun and exciting to read and feels like he had a blast writing this. I liked the way characters were introduced to us and how distorted that lens could be - with the narrator reminding us that this is the way he saw these people and the events but that he comes with his own biases. A point that becomes evident when all is revealed at the end.
Did I like the ending? Yes and no. It made sense and it was clever, but it wasn't satisfying. I felt there was a bit of injustice in how the murderer was viewed by the end. Other characters did worse things in my mind and I was feeling a bit of the fury myself for how the climax went down. It was cruel and I wasn't sorry at the death because of the cruelty. But, then, was I just being manipulated to feel that way? Questions that make re-reading this something I definitely want to do. Perhaps after the storm settles...
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