Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

We all have our things that fascinate us, right? For me, I love reading about serial killers and sociopaths. It’s a guilty pleasure, because a) it’s deeply morbid and b) serial killers and sociopaths exist in real life, and have real, lasting effects on real people. 

If you share either or both of these guilty pleasures, then Vera Kurian’s Never Saw Me Coming should be right up your alley. (And yes, I realize that psychopathy is different from sociopathy, but I found the former just as fascinating as the latter to read about.)

image from amazon.com

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Mini Synopsis: This book takes place at Adams University in Washington D.C. and centers around a specialized program for young psychopaths – students who don’t feel emotion and empathy in the same way as the general population. The perspective shifts among three of the program members and their director of psychology as they face a harrowing situation: someone on campus is killing students.  

What I Liked About This Book: This is high-concept storytelling at its best, I think. The question it asks is, can psychopaths really integrate with the general population? I thought the author explored the concept really well. Not in-depth, by any means; this is a plot-driven thriller, not a research project. But I felt like I got a really good taste of what it might be like to be inside a psychopath’s head, and what life might be like for people with that diagnosis to exist among people who don’t think and feel things the way they do. One of the points of view is told from a first-person perspective, and I loved that. The narrator was so fascinating and comparing her actions/reactions to those of one of the non-psychopath characters was deeply interesting. 

I loved the primary narrator’s backstory and how she approached her goals and ambitions. I loved the other main characters, because they were so different from the primary and it was really fun to compare them to one another. 

The characters, as part of their acceptance into this college and this program, are required to do experiments. The experiments were SO interesting to read about. To think about how I might respond to the questions and to see how the various characters responded was this wonderful little touch that showed off the author’s in-depth research while also making each character seem so much more vivid.

One thing I also enjoyed was the tone of the book. Sure, we’re talking about MURDER here, but… it was still kind of light and funny. There was plenty of witty banter and some of the characters’ choices amused me.

I loved this very brief part, near the end, where the author sort of steps in and reminds us that, sure, it’s fun to read about this kind of thing in a book, but there are real people who are affected every day by the very things we find shocking and titillating. It didn’t feel like I was being scolded, or preached to – it was just a sobering, thoughtful moment that I appreciated. 

What I Didn’t Like About This Book: The main thing that bothered me about this book was that I didn’t feel like the murderer was particularly surprising or interesting choice. It was fine, but I don’t know that I felt like the lead-up really made it that wonderful combination of exciting and right that I find most satisfying as a reader. Plus, I wasn’t ever clear on why the murderer decided to strike NOW. Maybe that was clarified at some point, but if so, I missed it. The other slightly bothersome aspect was related to the multi-perspective approach, which is that I wasn’t wild about the chapters that were told from the psychology director’s perspective. It’s not like they didn’t move the story forward… but they didn’t really give me deeper insight into his thoughts or background. I would have much rather stayed with one of the other characters, who were much more interesting. There were also some big questions I still have about the characters’ home lives, but… I guess you can’t get comprehensive back story on everyone, or have every single question about how and why answered. It was a compelling enough read that I am happy to forgive a few minor plot holes.  

Should You Read This Book? This was such a propulsive, fascinating read. Plot-driven, with a lot of really interesting insights into psychopathy. If you don’t mind a bit of gore, and you like fast-paced thrillers, I highly recommend adding this one to your list.

Books I Read in March

March was an okay reading month. I only read five books during the entire month, which is fine; I am not in a competition to see how many books I can read. The month started out strong, but devolved into Agatha Christie novels. Which is not a bad thing! I love Agatha Christie novels! And the three I read this month were some of my favorites of her canon. But there was nothing particularly exciting about the month, is I guess what I mean. Plus, one of the books I read was kind of disappointing. 

Only one of my March reads was a physical book. One was an audiobook and three were ebooks. Only one author was new to me. 

images from amazon.com

Best Book of the Month

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: This was my favorite book of March by FAR. I was skeptical about picking this one up, considering it’s about video gaming, a topic that does not interest me. But I ended up LOVING IT. You can read my full review here. 

Perfectly Solid Books

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz: I have been eagerly awaiting this book since I finished the third book in the series. This wasn’t my favorite – and, in fact, I had to look up the synopsis because I couldn’t remember a thing about it except that Anthony Horowitz (the character) is a murder suspect. It was a fine book, engaging and full of suspects who all seem equally likely to have murdered the victim. I like that we saw a little movement in the relationship between Horowitz and Detective Hawthorne. 

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie: I went on vacation in March and took my Kindle with me, after packing it full of novels. This was the one that held my attention, and it led – as Christie books so often do – to more Christie books. In it, Poirot has to figure out why lively Nick Buckley keeps finding herself in the middle of life-threatening incidents. I usually prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot, but I liked this one quite a bit.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie: Dr. Morley dies in his dental suite – but Hercule Poirot, one of his patients, isn’t sure that his dentist died by suicide the way the evidence seems to point. This was a fun one and I enjoyed it a lot.

The Hollow by Agatha Christie: A man dies while visiting friends for the weekend, and Hercule Poirot has to figure out who among the visitors wanted him dead. I loved this one because it had such vivid portrayals of all of the characters, and, partly, because Poirot played such a small role in the novel.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I just this moment finished listening to The Secret History by Donna Tartt. My first reaction upon finishing it is very simple and very loud: HOW was this Tartt’s DEBUT NOVEL? 

The Goldfinch is one of my favorite books of all time (although it is beginning to fade a bit in my memory; perhaps I need a reread), but the fact that Tartt BEGAN with The Secret History blows my mind. 

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Tartt’s Wikipedia page includes a couple of quotes from former professors, each of whom said that she was a genius. Plus her third novel won the Pulitzer. So she clearly has incredible writing chops.

And now I want to know: what are some of your favorite debut novels? (Some of my other picks would be: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, The Push by Ashley Audrain, and Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.)

Anyway: this book was a fabulous read.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Mini Synopsis: Richard Papen transfers from California to Hampden College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, where he joins a clique of five classics students studying under the eccentric and brilliant Julian Morrow. Richard, from the perspective of an adult many years removed from his time at Hampden, reflects on the murder of one of his classmates, and how it affected the relationships among the members of Julian’s tight-knit group. 

What I Liked About This Book: I find it hard to put words to what I loved about this book, which is, at its essence, its composition. It is, more so than many books, a finely woven tapestry with a murder at its center, the individual threads invisible until you look closely. 

This book is a murder mystery, of sorts – although you know the murder is coming, and you know its victim, and you even know who did the killing. The work of the story, then, is to reveal not only how the murder came about but why – and why it was a reasonable and necessary act, at least in the minds of those at its center. 

As the story unfolded, I was not only pulled into the plot and the complex relationships of the characters, but I was also wowed by how tightly crafted the story was. Tiny mentions early in the novel would resonate later in unexpected ways. 

While I wouldn’t say that this book reveled in language, or that it was particularly beautifully written, I did find myself delighted by some of the imagery. Quick, deft metaphors would stick with me as particularly apt descriptions – “a spider of anxiety,” or shadows so crisp they looked like cutouts on the grass. 

I loved the larger themes that Tartt touches on in this novel as well. Beauty, morality, consequences, wealth and social status, ownership/possession (of facts, of people, of information, of currency), guilt, philosophy vs reality, superficial appearances, excess, individuality and group dynamics. It is rich with thought provoking situations that resonate in today’s social climate. 

What I Didn’t Like About This Book: As with The Goldfinch, my main criticism is likability. Tartt masterfully, I think, brings the characters to life, lays bare their weaknesses and motivations. And yet I didn’t find a single one of them to be likable or even empathetic. It’s not that I found them unlikable. They were simply neutral in my head. So I wish I had been able to drum up some sort of emotional response to the characters, but I couldn’t. 

This book also had a Great Gatsby-an feel to it that, for me, grew very tiresome. So much drinking, so much smoking, so many drugs. Some of those things are necessary because they drive the plot forward, the drinking and drugs and smoking are thematically appropriate, and yet… the characters’ lives just felt overwhelmingly saturated by Dionysian excess which made me very weary.

This book was published in 1992, so there are certain aspects of the language and content that seem outdated. A few homophobic slurs and racist comments, specifically, have stuck with me after the fact. I always wonder, would those things have leapt out at me back in the early 90s the way they do now? Or was that kind of casual hate truly just… “acceptable”? I think the hateful language makes sense in terms of the characters who espouse these vile views, but it’s still unpleasant to come across. 

One last thing I didn’t like (and this is really stupid): the cover. I have seen this book a million times since I read The Goldfinch a decade ago, and every time I have found the cover so off-putting I have never been able to pick it up. Isn’t that silly? It’s not an offensive cover, just… dull, I guess? I don’t know. To each her own!

Should You Read This Book? I really enjoyed this book. It swept me up and felt utterly satisfying, even though there were no surprises. (Even the most shocking bits were hinted at well before they happened, which reaffirmed my feeling that this book is exquisitely well crafted.) If you liked The Goldfinch, you would probably enjoy this. I am struggling to find other works to compare it to – perhaps some of John Boyne’s work has a similar feel to the writing and the unfolding of the story. 

I listened to this one, and Tartt herself did the narration. It took me awhile to become acclimated to her speaking style, but it grew on me.