Ghost writing
An unconventional whodunit
by Jacqueline Bublitz (Allen & Unwin, $32.99)
Reviewed by Greg Fleming Two women, one exactly twice the age of the other, head to New York after new beginnings and a jettisoning of a troubled past.
Alice is just-turned 18 from small-town Wisconsin who carries deep trauma from a family tragedy and a recent abusive relationship with a much older man; the other is Ruby, a 36-year-old Melburnian who hops on a plane to escape her addiction to a booty-call lover. He is also – a la Bridget Jones’s Diary – engaged to be married.
Geographic changes, of course, never work – ‘‘damage gets packed in your suitcase, people stay on your skin’’ – but Bublitz has bigger things on her mind.
While the two women never actually meet in any conventional sense, they’ll impact on each other’s lives (and deaths) in surprising ways. Alice will end up murdered and narrate Ruby’s story from the afterlife (that’s not a spoiler, it’s flagged on the book’s synopsis), and it’s Ruby who will find her body while out on a jet-lagged, early morning run.
The buzz around New Plymouth-based Bublitz’s enthralling debut, which she edited at her favourite local wine bar, has been growing and one can see why. It’s a book that never quite goes where you expect – it’s a romance, a crime story, a celebration of New York, a political polemic and a tale of self-discovery and female empowerment. It’s also a real page-turner.
Before You Knew My Name deals in the darkest of subjects – death, trauma, grief, loneliness, male on female violence – but Bublitz has a light touch. There are similarities to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, which also uses a teenage posthumous narrator. Bublitz, however, employs it with subtlety. Alice’s posthumous powers are limited to encouraging a character to turn his head to notice something and, in one lovely moment, when she wills a new couple together, her ‘‘words come out as a saxophone solo, filling the room.’’
Our pretty, white narrator – ‘‘named for a girl who fell down a rabbit hole’’ – knows she’s luckier than other murdered girls who, because of their colour or station in life, get little publicity or press coverage: ‘‘There are enough of us dead girls out there. From a distance, so many of our stories look the same… Maybe you’ll like the truth of me better, and maybe you’ll wish this for every dead girl from now on.’’
While this is, broadly speaking, crime fiction, Bublitz plays with genres throughout. There are echoes of classic romcoms, and old musicals, as well as New York movies, true crime podcasts, and cop shows.
The book takes a turn around halfway through after Ruby attends a trauma group meeting and joins something called Death Club (anyone remember the 1990 movie Flatliners?).
It’s a delicate transition from a more ‘‘conventional’’ narrative that might’ve tripped up a writer less in charge of her material, but not Bublitz.
Readers looking for a conventional whodunit may be disappointed. What Bublitz has created here is a far richer stew – one that entertains as readily as it questions and challenges.
This review was originally published on Kete and is reproduced with kind permission.