THE LAST WORD
MIRIAM R. KRAMER
A
f o t e u Bouq
H C A BE KS BOO
What constitutes a beach book? It is different for all of us. This month many of us will be at the beach or the pool, traveling to see friends and family, or just hitting the deck or porch to snack on biographies, fiction, or history. Luckily I have been hitting some lighter books hard this past month to collect reading ideas for your own dog days of August, hopefully to be spent with a dog or two flopped at your feet and a glass of iced tea at hand.
First up are two suspense thrillers with unpredictable story-telling. Verity, by Colleen Hoover, works not just as a thriller but also as a sly commentary on writing with a classic example of an unreliable narrator. A New York writer, Lowen Ashleigh, who has had moderate success with her books, meets a man after she sees an accidental death on a street. After he cleans the blood off her, they both head off in separate directions, only to end up in the same literary meeting. Jeremy Crawford’s wife, Verity, is the author of a highly successful series of books. After an unusual car crash, she is left almost comatose with constant nurse supervision at home. Jeremy
12 August 2022
seeks a writer to continue his wife’s series of novels. Verity had thought very highly of Lowen’s work. Therefore Jeremy wants her to author the novels, first doing research to pick up narrative threads and organize Verity’s outlines. Against her better instincts, Lowen moves into their Vermont home to put together Verity’s writings. When she finds Verity’s diaries, she is swallowed up in Verity’s version of the truth, which paints herself and her husband in a certain light. She also finds herself obsessed with Jeremy and haunted by Verity. I heard an echo of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier throughout the novel. Until the book ends, the question
remains: who is Lowen to believe? The name Verity means the truth, but is she truthful? To the story or to herself? Are they the same thing? What do the answers to these questions mean in respect to Lowen’s own life and writing? I found the resulting questions the most meaningful aspect of the book. The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager is similarly creepy. Casey Fletcher, an actress and another New Yorker, has suffered the drowning of her beloved husband. After hitting the bottle hard to numb herself, she at least temporarily ruins her Broadway career. Her mother makes her retreat to their summer house on
a small lake in Vermont to dry out. Casey whiles away every day until she deems it appropriate to start drinking again, while sitting on the porch and looking at the few houses scattered on the shores. A famous modelphilanthropist, Katherine Royce, and her businessman husband, Tom, have moved into an expensive modern house there. One day, when Casey is paddling in a boat on the water, she rescues Katherine from drowning, even though Katherine was already blue from the cold and seemingly lifeless. They strike up a friendship, although Casey starts to notice THE LAST WORD > PAGE 13
Old Town Crier
