DNF’d at 70%. Gave it a good go but eventually just couldn’t handle it. Not for me. The interesting aspects of the story are minimized, pacing felt really slow, and a couple characters are annoying to me.

Probably a 3.5. The prose are great and there’s some time jumping such as you might expect with the person who wrote True Detective, but it isn’t quite as well implemented. The story starts off very tropey and throws one curveball but most of the pleasure is in the prose.

You can pretty much tell how the story will end despite a time jump that both relieves some tension and sets up something new, not quite nailing it, and the middle drags slightly. Feels like a writer still trying to figure out what they like about structure and what they really have to say.

Even when it meanders wildly the prose and strange revelations coupled with wit and wisdom is more than enough to make it a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

So, the first chapter was alright. Sets up the mystery and the deaths. Then it launches into an extremely granular explanation of their lives and how they made their fortune. Like, I’m talking business deals with percentages type granular. I am solely interested in the true crime aspect of the book (which is how it’s marketed), I just could not care less about this other stuff. On top of that, the narrator is pretty wooden. DNF’d at 10%.

As a vehicle that conveys a few ideological points of view in a range of subjects, it’s interesting, though sometimes contradictory and sometimes feels very random. When Satan is revealed it becomes a contrivance that shows its hand a little too much, engineered only to convey those things. There is no real plot so it doesn’t feel all that satisfying to read.

While this is a very clever and effective—especially in the cast of characters being archetypes so it can be applied to basically any community/social structure—I found it retreaded ground too often. It felt like a point was established and then was reiterated many times. Probably this was to parallel the slow, insidious nature of gaslighting and this kind of particular abuse. But it gave the novel a sense of not much helping despite when thinking about it and realizing things seemed to have clipped along alright. Perhaps the strong beginning of strangeness eventually becomes something you acclimate to? I’m not sure.

Either way, it was my only issue with the book. The cadence is lovely. The portrayal of Ireland in the troubles from this perspective is novel. I just recently read Say Nothing, and this perspective in conjunction with a more top-down approach like that novel really does a good job of illustrating what those times were like, and the effects it had in every day life.