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January 5, 2003
REVIEWS: To stay alive, and sane
If you are a novelist and you want your novel to sell, you could consider writing a thriller. That is because it is not uncommon for thrillers to fill half, or even most of a bestsellers’ list. So if there is a book that can almost guarantee a royalty, it is a thriller. Good thrillers are of course unputdownable, but even mediocre thrillers are unlikely to be discarded half read. And then, as is well known, thrillers are quite addictive.
A thriller can absorb a great range of writing styles. The psychological thriller, the murder mystery, the spy thriller are only broad divisions. The thriller can accommodate the melodramatic writer, the pornographic writer, the craftsman, the literary writer, and many others, including a mole like John Le Carre, who habitually tunnels away into the minds of his characters.
And now for Nicci French, whose Land of the living is the most recent of her several best selling thrillers. To those, who are frankly addicted to thrillers, her latest novel is a ‘must read’, an edge of the chair read, guaranteeing complete, tingling satisfaction. To those others who passively succumb to the view that thrillers are not literary works, and therefore not worth wasting one’s time on, Nicci French brings a ‘put me down if you can’ challenge and a kiss of doom to the condescending notion. Here is an intelligent piece of writing that does not violate the sensibilities of the reader with an exacting taste.
Abbie Devereaux, the protagonist, wakes up one day (or night) in pitch darkness. She finds herself bound, hooded, and lying in a place she doesn’t recognize. Most frightening of all, she doesn’t remember how she got there, and when she tries to recollect, she realizes that her recent past has vanished from her memory. To add to the horror, it dawns on Abbie that she is being watched by a man who is almost certainly a murderer. He feeds her enough to ensure her bare survival, and speaks little except to issue instructions or to tell her that he will eventually kill her ... as he has killed the others.
The most important task for Abbie at this point is to stay alive — and sane. She does both, because she has pluck and a fertile imagination. But she is in an environment far removed from the world of ordinary, everyday life — the land of the living — and all her energies are directed towards getting back on that planet.
Apart from the action, brisk, exciting, and suspenseful, which is the one requirement of the genre, Nicci French’s book shows signs of the kind of talents that are usually expected of a literary work.
What occupies centre stage is of course the action; but unobtrusive, like clues in a treasure hunt, are dialogues that fit in and are natural, quick strokes of characterization, fleeting perceptions that show neatly and without melodramatic fuss what it is like to be hunted and alone. In her flight from the murderer, in which she is both the huntress and the quarry, Abbie is conscious of concealed disbelief and skepticism in her closest friends when she attempts to explain her predicament to them. And even while she is rushed, and running out of time, her observation on this circumstance is poignant:
“The trouble is, friendships are all about tact.... You don’t want to know what [your friends] really think or how far their loyalty goes. You want to be very careful before you test it.”
Nicci French has a light touch. The action in her book, as in all good thrillers, does not slacken. The urgent, speeding prose, as the climax draws near is especially gripping. French has produced a work guaranteed to turn a dull afternoon into cozy, enjoyable time — time that is the gift of an agreeable book.
Land of the living
By Nicci French
Michael Joseph/Penguin Distributed in Pakistan by Paramount Books, 152/O, Block 2, PECH Society, Karachi-75400
Tel: 021-4310030.
Email:
paramount@cyber.net.pk
ISBN 0-718-14517-8. 310pp. Rs475
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