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A review by coronaurora
Tony and Susan by Austin Wright
Did not finish book.
It starts so strong, with this perceptive, keen-to-read-between-the-lines female leafing through a thriller written by her ex-partner. The story within the parent story also starts strong with all the atmosphere and hooks of a nail biting thriller. However, by the middle you are left panting by the interminable psychological state-capture of Susan with emotionally loaded phrases and words all the while as the companion thriller has been slowly morphing into a morbid, bleak drama of a grieving man that you never signed up to read in the first place (also made interminable by breathless stacking of melodramatic, screaming almost-sentences to capture the immediacy and intensity of the emotional/existential havoc).
It is really overkill and I was disappointed that the editor here didn't have the good sense to trim and slice both threads, so the themes, the tone and the sucker-punches shone brighter. Hell, even the "meh" after realising there was not much give or take between the threads (how could there be? we are going between a B-movie slasher and a kitchen sink drama!) would have been more pleasant had it come atleast 50 pages sooner. I cared for Susan and Tony, just not this much.
Still, late Mr Wright was clearly someone who didn't write indifferently, and that is something I admire. He had the props to really make me believe we are on to some kind of a masterpiece here for a good third of the book. Who knows, with a good editor and some more shots at publishing, we would have seen better stories from his pen. For now, Tom Ford's immaculately dressed-up and presumably-abridged screen translation will have to do.
It is really overkill and I was disappointed that the editor here didn't have the good sense to trim and slice both threads, so the themes, the tone and the sucker-punches shone brighter. Hell, even the "meh" after realising there was not much give or take between the threads (how could there be? we are going between a B-movie slasher and a kitchen sink drama!) would have been more pleasant had it come atleast 50 pages sooner. I cared for Susan and Tony, just not this much.
Still, late Mr Wright was clearly someone who didn't write indifferently, and that is something I admire. He had the props to really make me believe we are on to some kind of a masterpiece here for a good third of the book. Who knows, with a good editor and some more shots at publishing, we would have seen better stories from his pen. For now, Tom Ford's immaculately dressed-up and presumably-abridged screen translation will have to do.