A review by travelswithcharlie
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

  • Loveable characters? No

1.5

While the author proclaims the intention of this book is to give voice to the victims and to dissect the glorification of serial killers (and many reviewers and fans will agree), the book takes a nose dive and does the exact opposite of what the author intended. For one thing, Ansel is a fictionalized version of Ted Bundy but with less victims.
He's attractive enough that one of his victim's family members masturbates to the thought of him.
Because only one victim is really touched upon and the others are just random, forgettable girls, there is no voice to give to them. We just get made up fantasies (only a couple of pages in length) at the end of the book about what their lives could have been like. And the use of the second person point of view for Ansel did not work. Instead, he was humanized and from my understanding,
magically felt love in the last few seconds of his life and therefore, we should sympathize and be upset that he is being executed.
The author also interjects her own commentary on the death penalty. While I am personally against the death penalty, this commentary was odd given the context. There are many other issues I had with the book, but I will leave it at this. 

Trigger warning: There is animal cruelty and animal death.
The horrific descriptions of what he did to animals was more of a focus than anything he did to his victims.


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