This is a novel about a woman contemplating killing a man because her ex-husband has left her not as rich as she’d like. She seems to think she is actually living in poverty, which is unfair and cannot be allowed because she is just better than all the other poors she talks so condescendingly about. It’s not about social inequality or anything, it’s that She Deserves More. Craig seems to suspect that she does not have my sympathy and introduces the detail that the ex is domestically violent. Unfortunately this is lazily done, merely cynical emotional manipulation designed to garner my sympathies, and is clearly not the main character’s motivation. Also, it reads as though she has done zero research into the topic, which is not great. 

Meanwhile endless pages are spent on a dissection of the rising property prices and economic tribulations of Cornwall. These digressions take the place of any plot development, as little happens for huge portions of the book once we are past the set-up of the “murder pact”, which was already laid out in the blurb. Instead our judgemental protagonist stumbles around achieving nothing and hanging well behind the reader in understanding what little is happening, leading to a frustrating read. Supposedly surprise turns are glaringly obvious, and events are on a level with bad Point Horror clichés. Or maybe even a Point Romance. Two ‘twists’ rely on the exact same device – confusion caused by multiple nicknames for the same person. This is pretty weak the first time, and embarrassing the second. 

The stupidity of our protagonist Hannah, who genuinely considers killing someone by giving them a bad scare, is frustrating. But worse are the weird snobbish and racist undertones. Terms like “legions” and “dregs” are used to describe the undesirables who are spoiling Cornwall. There is mention of how white people are being ignored. Muslims appear solely to oppress women. Also, there’s a weird part where our heroine seems to wonder if her ex-husband’s misogyny is rooted in homosexuality, and then links that to him having being abused as a child. Perhaps that wasn’t what was intended, but if not then I’m at a loss as to what I was supposed to take from that part. It certainly seems extremely problematic. But there again I’ve possibly completely misunderstood it, as sometimes I have no idea what the author is talking about. For example, what does “She’a a sport of nature like me.” mean? There are no context clues to help me out. 

 

Another irritation for me are the characters with names like Loveday, Constantine Coad, and Ivo Sponge. Everybody acts like this is totally normal. Ivo Sponge?? It sounds like a Drag Queen pun name that I can’t quite decipher. Plus this novel features the sort of suspiciously angelic and precocious fictional child who is conveniently out of the way for the majority of the story, but occasionally appears to point out with cloying cuteness how beautiful mummy looks, show how kind and worthy a man a love interest is by having a charming playtime scene with him, hand over a plot point or be a vessel for drama. 

 

The plot seems to move in circles for hundreds of pages, as Cornish people explain Cornwall to each other for my benefit, and we re-cover the well-trodden ground of how old houses get to look tatty and how they should be staged for sale. The same conversations happen over and over again – the debate over whether the main male character is a Bad Man or a Good Man; the history of how a man inherited a house from his father, who was an alcoholic; the reiteration of Hannan’s superiority over the masses because she reads books; the endlessly re-trodden question of whether videogames are comparable to novels as a form of art (Why is this an issue? It seems to concern everyone. By which I mean, it seems to obsess Craig and thus every one of her characters has to weigh in with the same opinions). 

At one point we even get a brief critique of the novel being copied, Strangers on a Train, which seems audacious and unwise. Otherwise it’s mainly pages and pages of the reflections of our dull-minded and self-pitying protagonist, as she fails to take any interest in the world around her and complains at length about how difficult her life is and how nobody appreciates how wonderful she is for raising a child. She also slowly and predictably falls in love with the man she is supposed to be killing, because in between taking advantage of her he remembers to flatter her. Meanwhile the reader is treated to offensive, reactionary and bizarre statements like “if anyone would understand the mystery and beauty of Endpoint [a Cornish house], it might be someone from the Far East” and “Christian churches were now the last line of defence against the indifference and stupidity of successive governments of different political stripes” 

One of the more painful parts is the love interest’s attempts to get my sympathy for his domestic abuse by complaining about how he was forced by his abuser to take up “mindfulness classes and being woke rather than, you know, having a conscience and trying to be a decent person” How are those things diametrically opposed? Why is this a feature of domestic abuse? I assume that a certain type of person is being spoken to here and understands this, but it’s a dog-whistle I can’t hear.  He also talks of how his ex-wife was such a monster she got angry at him for looking at other women in the street, even though every normal man does so. So many problematic layers there. Hannah of course agrees. Poor men ☹ This isn’t surprising, as she is the sort of woman who makes unexamined remarks like “for a woman there are occasions when clothes are all that stand between happiness and misery” and shows no interest in her fellow women until a man badly treats her and she goes running to them for help. 

 

The overall arc is that of a protagonist completely unable to see anything outside of her very narrow purview, who has almost no agency in the story, choosing to merely stand about whilst things happen, and generally not trouble herself as to why. As the novel proceeds she briefly considers that maybe her problems might be symptomatic of wider social problems, but then realises that actually no, everything is all about her and the status quo should be preserved. She is rewarded for her conformity by the convenient appearance of large amounts of money and the man she requires, and somehow manages to accidentally save her hometown by force of being a good, quiet woman who’s good at cleaning. The gloating satisfaction of her thinking “Money was not magic; but it was perhaps the closest thing, if used wisely and well” as everyone and everything scrambles to help her is in very poor taste at best. 

 

For me, this is a triumph of conventionality and small-mindedness mis-sold as being about a murder plot when in fact it’s a massively dull romance about the most boring woman in the world having everything magically work out for her. It also had an absolutely ridiculous ending, although admittedly my patience had worn pretty thin by then so maybe I was more intolerant than necessary.