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A review by davisek223
All That Is Mine I Carry with Me by William Landay
2.0
I really enjoyed William Landay's Defending Jacob, but this one was just okay. The author made some odd narrative choices that threw me off repeatedly and kept me from enjoying the book as much as I might have.
For example, Book 1 is narrated by a family friend who is a writer -- a guy named Phil Solomon. Because Phil is hearing the story years after the fact, there's a lot of telling rather than showing -- not a good way to spin a murder mystery yarn. We reach the end of Book 1 and we never hear from Phil again -- he and his book pretty much disappear, which is super weird. Book 2 picks up with narration by the murder victim, which is odd in and of itself, but odder still because every time I picked the book up, I forgot that we weren't still in Phil's voice. I'd get two or three paragraphs in and the narrator would say something like "the detective was very close to finding out why I died," and I'd have to go back and reread, reminding myself that the story was now being told by Jane, not Phil. Very off-putting.
We finally get to narration by Jeff, the son of the murder victim, and it's clear that he should have been the voice all along. But hearing him finally tell the story is too good to be true -- we very shortly move to the voice of his father, who has Alzheimer's, and may or may not have committed a murder. He doesn't remember.
AAUUUGGHHH!
Sometimes books flip perspectives and there's a reason for it. In this book, I never could see what that reason might be, except that the author was trying to do something unexpected. Weird narrative choices for no reason are just annoying.
I kept reading because I wanted to find out who did it.
I read this book because I thought it was a murder mystery. What it's really about is a family in turmoil in the aftermath of a tragedy. Unfortunately I didn't care enough about any of them to care about their turmoil. I just wanted to see how the mystery turned out, and I didn't get that.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a sneak peek at this book.
For example, Book 1 is narrated by a family friend who is a writer -- a guy named Phil Solomon. Because Phil is hearing the story years after the fact, there's a lot of telling rather than showing -- not a good way to spin a murder mystery yarn. We reach the end of Book 1 and we never hear from Phil again -- he and his book pretty much disappear, which is super weird. Book 2 picks up with narration by the murder victim, which is odd in and of itself, but odder still because every time I picked the book up, I forgot that we weren't still in Phil's voice. I'd get two or three paragraphs in and the narrator would say something like "the detective was very close to finding out why I died," and I'd have to go back and reread, reminding myself that the story was now being told by Jane, not Phil. Very off-putting.
We finally get to narration by Jeff, the son of the murder victim, and it's clear that he should have been the voice all along. But hearing him finally tell the story is too good to be true -- we very shortly move to the voice of his father, who has Alzheimer's, and may or may not have committed a murder. He doesn't remember.
AAUUUGGHHH!
Sometimes books flip perspectives and there's a reason for it. In this book, I never could see what that reason might be, except that the author was trying to do something unexpected. Weird narrative choices for no reason are just annoying.
I kept reading because I wanted to find out who did it.
Spoiler
But we're never told definitively -- we're left to draw our own conclusions. There's a court case that provides no answers and creates a lot of courtroom drama for nothing. There's a confession from some guy we've never heard of that the cops seem to accept at face value even though there's a hole in the guy's story big enough to drive a truck through. There's a mysterious clue toward the end that I think was maybe supposed to lead us to a definite "a-ha" moment. But not much was made of this clue earlier in the book, so I'm really not sure what we're supposed to surmise.I read this book because I thought it was a murder mystery. What it's really about is a family in turmoil in the aftermath of a tragedy. Unfortunately I didn't care enough about any of them to care about their turmoil. I just wanted to see how the mystery turned out, and I didn't get that.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a sneak peek at this book.