A review by foggy_rosamund
The Answers by Catherine Lacey

3.0

This is Lacey's first novel, which I read shortly after her most recent, Biography of X. It's very interesting to see how a writer's preoccupations can remain the same, while the way they handle them is quite different. Like in Biography of X, Lacey is interested in surveillance, manufactured emotion, and how a traumatic childhood informs the present. In this case, the story is about Mary Parsons, a woman whose parents brought her up entirely cut off from wider society, living off the land, and Kurt Sky, a film-maker and film-star. Mary ends up in an experiment as one of Kurt Sky's many paid girlfriends, inhabiting a particular role and doing a particular set of duties. Mary's lack of a sense of self, and Kurt's extreme self-obsession are put in extreme tension with one another. I enjoyed reading this, but I was frustrated that some threads in it seemed to be neglected or forgotten. Also, the denouement in this is very similar to the ending of Biography of X, and in both cases I think it's the weakest part of the book. I enjoyed reading this, and I would read more by Lacey, but it is a flawed work.