And Then There Were None | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Sourcebooks Landmark, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1492657965

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Sebastian Bell wakes up in the rain in the woods, completely disoriented, and without any memories except the name Anna. He hears screaming nearby and is convinced he’s witnessed a murder. Stumbling to the nearest house, a deteriorating Gothic heap called Blackheath, owned by the wealthy Hardcastle family, he discovers he is a guest at a bizarre weekend party commemorating the nineteenth anniversary of the death of young Thomas Hardcastle and also celebrating the arrival home of his older sister, Evelyn. In a striking similarity to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the invited guests, all present the day Thomas Hardcastle died, are, for the most part unlikable, judgmental, selfish, and greedy, although a few have hidden, redeeming, characteristics. Some of them, or at least one of them, is a murderer. All of them are trapped at Blackheath. But that’s where the similarity ends.

In a reality-bending twist worthy of David Lynch, it turns out that everyone at the party is unwittingly repeating the same day over and over again. Sebastian (or is he Sebastian?), is told that he has eight opportunities to solve the murder and escape the cycle before he starts repeating the day again without memories and has to start the process over from scratch. In a surrealistic, time-traveling, body-hopping puzzle of a story with echoes of 1930s mystery novels, Gothic family secrets, and ominous suggestions about the future, Turton manages to say quite a lot about the human condition, the advantages and disadvantages of memory, the choices we make, and our ability to change, forgive, and redeem ourselves.

We see the story from our main character’s point of view. Since he’s disoriented, wounded, easily deceived, and has no idea what’s going on or who he actually is, it is completely bewildering and terrifying. It is work to keep track of the various threads of the plot as they twist and tangle with one another, but the story is compelling and worth the effort, and the payoff is fantastic.

I have already said too much and can’t say more without completely spoiling the plot. If you’re bored with straightforward mystery novels or enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife, and are ready to suspend disbelief, this is a perfect choice. Highly recommended.

Musings: Drawing on the Walls: The Boy Who Drew Cats

The Boy Who Drew Cats adapted by Lafcadio Hearn and Margaret Hodges, and illustrated by Aki Sogabe

Holiday House, 2002

ISBN-13: 978-0823415946

Available: Used hardcover and paperback, Audible audiobook

I had a reader request the name of a book about a little boy drawing all over the walls. The classic story about a boy drawing himself into a story is Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, but that didn’t seem quite right. I finally remembered a Japanese folktale about a boy who drew all over the walls of a temple and drove a demon away, and was able to find what I think is really the answer to this question; it’s a story called “The Boy Who Drew Cats”, and it has been adapted and illustrated many times. The copy pictured above was adapted by Lafcadio Hearn and Margaret Hodges, and illustrated by Aki Sogabe, but there are MANY other versions.

The story follows a young man who is obsessed with drawing cats; he draws only cats, but he draws them amazingly well. Forced to leave home to find a trade, he spends the night in an abandoned temple, with empty screens all around, just begging to be painted with cats. After painting the walls, the boy falls asleep, waking in the night to hear a tremendous fight. In the morning, he discovers a terrible rat demon, dead, and notices the cats on the screens are not in the same positions he had painted them in. His cats have defeated the monster and saved his life, revealing his artistic ability and enabling him to become a professional artist.

Walls can be the source of creativity, as they are in the nonfiction picture book Painting for Peace in Ferguson, a story about the creative approach the community of Ferguson took to beautify and inspire neighborhoods where the buildings had been boarded up or defaced following demonstrations against police brutality that turned violent. They can become a personification of insanity or paranoia, as they are in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, in which the protagonist has delusions of a trapped woman creeping behind the room’s wallpaper, or the whispers from her dead mother that one character hears in Amy Lukavics’ The Women in the Walls.

Walls can be an “in-between” place, as they are in Neil Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls and Coraline, in which the main characters have to make choices about whether they will be passive or active participants in their own lives. If you are on the outside, walls can be a barrier you look to cross that conceal a treasure inside, as in The Secret Garden, and if you are on the inside they can be a trap– a haunted house that won’t let go, a locked-room mystery you can’t escape, like the inhabitants of the island in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. If you are the builder, like Hugh Crain in The Haunting of Hill House, you can make the walls be disorienting and disturbing to inhabitants to influence their minds, and if you want to keep people away, like Baba Yaga, you can decorate with human skulls.

Or you can follow your passion where it goes, and both protect and beautify the world by transforming walls into something new, like the boy who drew cats.