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A review by iviarelle
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I really wanted to like this. I tried. I gave it every chance I could find it in me to give.
I just kinda can't. And it's for one primary and one secondary reason.
Firstly, and most obviously, this book doesn't offer its female characters any depth. Every woman on the page is a one note tune. Even in the twists that involve a woman, they're the most overused and unsubtle kind of tropes. If depth is attributed to a woman, it's only through telling us she's more, not by showing us. And that's a problem.
The second problem is... Less widely recognized. The men in this story don't get a whole lot of depth either, which is a little obfuscated by the much wider range of types of men that exist in the story. But, some of those men are horrific tropes walking.
Take Ravencourt: every moment spent with him is spent thinking about how fat he is. Almost every paragraph includes some remark about shameful gross obesity or how difficult his being shamefully obese makes it to walk down a flat hallway. While it's true that being fat is hard, there's WAY too much judgement and downright fatphobia or fatmisia in every line of the parts where he's mentioned.
Take the drug dealing doctor, the privileged rapist whose mother buys his way out of trouble again and again... It's all part of a pattern and not one that flatters the author's sender of creativity or knowledge of human nature.
You could argue that the point of the story is to be flat and unsubtle, but I don't buy it. I think this could have been much more interesting if the author had given a damn. And giving a damn is the least we should expect from people or books these days.
I just kinda can't. And it's for one primary and one secondary reason.
Firstly, and most obviously, this book doesn't offer its female characters any depth. Every woman on the page is a one note tune. Even in the twists that involve a woman, they're the most overused and unsubtle kind of tropes. If depth is attributed to a woman, it's only through telling us she's more, not by showing us. And that's a problem.
The second problem is... Less widely recognized. The men in this story don't get a whole lot of depth either, which is a little obfuscated by the much wider range of types of men that exist in the story. But, some of those men are horrific tropes walking.
Take Ravencourt: every moment spent with him is spent thinking about how fat he is. Almost every paragraph includes some remark about shameful gross obesity or how difficult his being shamefully obese makes it to walk down a flat hallway. While it's true that being fat is hard, there's WAY too much judgement and downright fatphobia or fatmisia in every line of the parts where he's mentioned.
Take the drug dealing doctor, the privileged rapist whose mother buys his way out of trouble again and again... It's all part of a pattern and not one that flatters the author's sender of creativity or knowledge of human nature.
You could argue that the point of the story is to be flat and unsubtle, but I don't buy it. I think this could have been much more interesting if the author had given a damn. And giving a damn is the least we should expect from people or books these days.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Murder
Moderate: Ableism, Alcoholism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Forced institutionalization