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Every Contact Leaves a Trace
Product Description 'If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don't know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did...' So speaks Alex, the narrator of this unforgettable literary thriller. Alex is in his thirties, a solitary man who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful and vivacious wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one Midsummer Night by the lake in the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College, Oxford, Alex's life as he knew it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter, and through the shroud of his shock and grief, begins to try to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife's death. Playing host to Alex's winter visit is Harry, Rachel's former tutor and trusted mentor, who turns out to have been involved in some way in almost every significant development of their relationship throughout their undergraduate years. In his exploration of Rachel's history, Alex also turns to Evie, Rachel's self-centred and difficult godmother, whose jealousy of her charge has waxed and waned over the years. And then there are her university friends, Anthony and Cissy, who shared with Rachel her love of Browning and a taste for the illicit. As Alex delves deep into the past to uncover shocking secrets and constantly shifting versions of the truth, it is with these virtual strangers as his guides that he begins to confront the terrifying reality that neither his life, nor his love, are the things he thought them to be. Part love story, part murder-mystery, this is an extraordinary debut from a powerful new voice in fiction, guaranteed to make your heart beat faster and faster...
384 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2012
30 people are currently reading
1411 people want to read
About the author
Elanor Dymott
4 books31 followersElanor was born in Chingola, Zambia, in 1973. She was educated in the USA and England and also spent parts of her childhood in South East Asia. After studying English at Oxford University, she qualified as a lawyer before becoming a law reporter. Her short fiction has been published in Stand, The Warwick Review and Algebra. Every Contact Leaves A Trace is her first novel, and was longlisted for The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Elanor lives in London where she plays jazz flute and is writing more novels.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
June 23, 2020
i really liked this, but i can totally understand why others do not - it is a very frustrating book if the structure just isn't your thing. if you are an impatient person; someone who wants their answers RIGHT FRIGGIN' NOW!, then this book is gonna make you want to throw it. it is a weaving, meandering, teasing book; one whose flaws i completely acknowledge, but which flaws did not diminish my enjoyment of the story at all.
it is about a man whose wife is murdered, and its central mystery is how? and by whom? and why??
typical mystery fare.
but the story is going to take a while to unpack itself.
rachel and alex met at oxford and dated briefly. rachel was a shining star of the english department and she and two other students, cissie and anthony, studied under browning scholar harry gardner, and maintained an intensely close circle, shades of secret history. the three students developed reputations for debauchery after many public displays of drinking and sexual misconduct, and were feared, loathed, admired and envied by the rest of the student body. when cissy and anthony fail to return to oxford one semester, and she finds herself alone and adrift, rachel and alex become close, until she breaks it off suddenly and unexpectedly.
years later, alex is attending the wedding of his best friend richard, his only friend from oxford, where he runs into rachel, for whom he has been pining all these years. after a welcome-back-blowie in the courtyard, they are wed the next day.
these things happen.
and for a while, it is all wonderful. he has become a very successful lawyer, and can afford all the finer things, and his wealth allows rachel the freedom to write and they are blissfully happy and in love. except that she refuses to talk about her past, about the students she was once inseparable from, and about the woman who raised her after she was orphaned at a young age. but that's a minor speed bump - they are living the dreeeeeam, and alex has never been happier - in the arms of a woman he has loved nearly his whole life.
until they take a weekend trip back to oxford for a dinner with harry gardner, and rachel is murdered.
after alex has been cleared of the murder, the police have no leads, and it seems the case will never be solved, he is suddenly summoned again by harry, who decides to tell alex everything he knows, which is substantial, and let alex make up his mind about what to do with the information. so - easy-peasy! this should be cleared up in three pages. but, no.
instead, the story is drawn out like taffy, while alex listens to harry tell the story at his own pace, pausing frequently over the course of a couple of days when the telling becomes too much for harry, emotionally. alex himself seems to be in no hurry to hear the answer, as he drifts in and out of the explanations, becoming distracted by a photograph that unleashes memories of rachel in her youth, by a book, by a reverie, half-listening, half-remembering, slowly putting the pieces together. letters and other pieces of evidence will be given to him, and he will only look at them days later, people will fall asleep in the middle of stories, huge important details will be forgotten, only to be remembered at just the right moment, and eventually, all the secrets rachel tried so hard to keep will be revealed.
it sounds kind of dopey, and it is, but she is a good enough writer that the things that are so maddening about it are also captivating. it is narcotizing in the best possible way. you will want to shake all the characters, but you will also be compelled to find out what happens.
rachel is mostly a horrorshow - one of those charismatic people who ensnares others and leaves an indelible mark. for some, this will take the shape of an unflagging infatuation, and for others, it will drive them to murder. she's awful, yeah, a canny woman trying to escape the mistakes of her past in the arms of someone stable and unchallenging. alex's obvious devotion is useful to her, but it would be cynical to believe she wasn't genuinely happy. it's complicated.
this is the second book in a row i have read, both by female novelists, in which the love object is a beautiful, vivacious, and fairly selfish (very selfish in this book) woman who leaves her man for a flimsy reason, and his response is to put the rest of his life on hold, waiting for her return. i'm not sure if this is some kind of fantasy i have never had, but it strikes me as one of those melodramatic, wuthering heights passions that makes sense on the moors, but in a contemporary setting just seems implausible and toxic.
but i gotta say, for all its frustrating bits, the story is really engaging, but then i really love slow-moving psychological suspense stories that take their sweet time. the book is flawed, the characters are flawed, but i enjoyed every minute of it, even when i was shouting "open the damn letter, you ninny!"
good times.
..................................................................................................................................
goodreads climate making me too saddish to review lately.
instead, tonight i will make banana muffins and watch project runway.
but review is coming. read blair's for now!!
come to my blog!
it is about a man whose wife is murdered, and its central mystery is how? and by whom? and why??
typical mystery fare.
but the story is going to take a while to unpack itself.
rachel and alex met at oxford and dated briefly. rachel was a shining star of the english department and she and two other students, cissie and anthony, studied under browning scholar harry gardner, and maintained an intensely close circle, shades of secret history. the three students developed reputations for debauchery after many public displays of drinking and sexual misconduct, and were feared, loathed, admired and envied by the rest of the student body. when cissy and anthony fail to return to oxford one semester, and she finds herself alone and adrift, rachel and alex become close, until she breaks it off suddenly and unexpectedly.
years later, alex is attending the wedding of his best friend richard, his only friend from oxford, where he runs into rachel, for whom he has been pining all these years. after a welcome-back-blowie in the courtyard, they are wed the next day.
these things happen.
and for a while, it is all wonderful. he has become a very successful lawyer, and can afford all the finer things, and his wealth allows rachel the freedom to write and they are blissfully happy and in love. except that she refuses to talk about her past, about the students she was once inseparable from, and about the woman who raised her after she was orphaned at a young age. but that's a minor speed bump - they are living the dreeeeeam, and alex has never been happier - in the arms of a woman he has loved nearly his whole life.
until they take a weekend trip back to oxford for a dinner with harry gardner, and rachel is murdered.
after alex has been cleared of the murder, the police have no leads, and it seems the case will never be solved, he is suddenly summoned again by harry, who decides to tell alex everything he knows, which is substantial, and let alex make up his mind about what to do with the information. so - easy-peasy! this should be cleared up in three pages. but, no.
instead, the story is drawn out like taffy, while alex listens to harry tell the story at his own pace, pausing frequently over the course of a couple of days when the telling becomes too much for harry, emotionally. alex himself seems to be in no hurry to hear the answer, as he drifts in and out of the explanations, becoming distracted by a photograph that unleashes memories of rachel in her youth, by a book, by a reverie, half-listening, half-remembering, slowly putting the pieces together. letters and other pieces of evidence will be given to him, and he will only look at them days later, people will fall asleep in the middle of stories, huge important details will be forgotten, only to be remembered at just the right moment, and eventually, all the secrets rachel tried so hard to keep will be revealed.
it sounds kind of dopey, and it is, but she is a good enough writer that the things that are so maddening about it are also captivating. it is narcotizing in the best possible way. you will want to shake all the characters, but you will also be compelled to find out what happens.
rachel is mostly a horrorshow - one of those charismatic people who ensnares others and leaves an indelible mark. for some, this will take the shape of an unflagging infatuation, and for others, it will drive them to murder. she's awful, yeah, a canny woman trying to escape the mistakes of her past in the arms of someone stable and unchallenging. alex's obvious devotion is useful to her, but it would be cynical to believe she wasn't genuinely happy. it's complicated.
this is the second book in a row i have read, both by female novelists, in which the love object is a beautiful, vivacious, and fairly selfish (very selfish in this book) woman who leaves her man for a flimsy reason, and his response is to put the rest of his life on hold, waiting for her return. i'm not sure if this is some kind of fantasy i have never had, but it strikes me as one of those melodramatic, wuthering heights passions that makes sense on the moors, but in a contemporary setting just seems implausible and toxic.
but i gotta say, for all its frustrating bits, the story is really engaging, but then i really love slow-moving psychological suspense stories that take their sweet time. the book is flawed, the characters are flawed, but i enjoyed every minute of it, even when i was shouting "open the damn letter, you ninny!"
good times.
..................................................................................................................................
goodreads climate making me too saddish to review lately.
instead, tonight i will make banana muffins and watch project runway.
but review is coming. read blair's for now!!
come to my blog!
July 9, 2015
I've mentioned before - on numerous occasions, I think - that I'm not keen on love stories. This doesn't mean I'm a killjoy about romance: I like reading about love, but it has to be realistically portrayed. To enjoy a fictional romance, I have to believe in the characters, feel for them, root for them: get this right and it's one of the best things fiction can do. But too often I feel like authors think they can just tell their readers the relationship between two characters is a great love story, rather than doing anything to prove it. Too often books feature 'star-crossed' relationships that just wouldn't happen in real life. Too often these elements ruin or at least taint the rest of the story. Every Contact Leaves a Trace, a book I had sky-high hopes for, is, sadly, no exception.
Our protagonist and narrator is Alex, a successful lawyer who studied at Worcester College, Oxford. While there, he met a fellow student named Rachel, with whom he enjoyed a brief affair one summer. After graduating, Alex doesn't see Rachel again for over a decade, although he constantly thinks about her and hopes to see her on the streets of London, where he now lives. Then, at a friend's wedding, he finds himself seated across from Rachel. The next day, they decide to get married. Some months after their wedding, Rachel is brutally murdered during a visit to their old college. Devastated, Alex sets out to discover the truth behind how this came to happen to her, and in the process he discovers there was much he did not know about his wife.
I surely can't be alone in thinking that isn't romantic for a successful, wealthy, highly intelligent, cultured and presumably attractive man to remain fixated on a girl from university for so many years afterwards. It's weird, and kind of unbelievable. It isn't romantic that Rachel would want to marry him so suddenly and then appear to be so deeply in love with him immediately. Again, it's weird, and very unbelievable. And there's absolutely nothing strange or mysterious about Alex discovering that Rachel had a lot of secrets - it's a fact that he barely knew her. Aside from which, we're told that Rachel a) refused to ever discuss the past and b) snapped and shouted at Alex whenever he tried to ask her about the ONE family member that's a part of her life. All of which left me wondering what, exactly, it was that he expected? I found this 'romance' so odd and unbelievable that I could barely believe it was supposed to be taken seriously; adding to this negativity was the fact that neither Alex nor Rachel were portrayed as likeable people. At an early stage, I began to suspect that .
Enough of the bad points. I'm dwelling on them perhaps a little more than is necessary because I'm angry that they tarnished a story that might otherwise have become a genuine favourite. Every Contact Leaves a Trace is a rich, atmospheric book, filled with layers of intrigue and emotional turmoil, set against a meticulously detailed background which is a tantalising mixture of academia and debauchery. When Alex listens to the tale told by Harry, Rachel's former tutor, the author's style really comes into its own - I found this past narrative, in which we learn about Rachel's student days as part of an exceptionally close-knit group of three, far more engaging than the present-day narrative.
In spite of its one big flaw, this was absolutely my kind of book, and I really did savour reading it. This is a narrative that takes its time to unfold, lingering over small details and lengthy ruminations, but this is in no way a bad thing. The slower-than-average pace suits the twisting journey of the plot, told in suitably elegant prose. Every Contact Leaves a Trace is a great debut, and being a debut, I'm willing to forgive its imperfections. The main issue, in fact, is that the rest of it is so good, the problematic 'love story' stands out all the more. Despite the fact that this review has probably ended up sounding more negative than positive, I do thoroughly recommend this book.
Our protagonist and narrator is Alex, a successful lawyer who studied at Worcester College, Oxford. While there, he met a fellow student named Rachel, with whom he enjoyed a brief affair one summer. After graduating, Alex doesn't see Rachel again for over a decade, although he constantly thinks about her and hopes to see her on the streets of London, where he now lives. Then, at a friend's wedding, he finds himself seated across from Rachel. The next day, they decide to get married. Some months after their wedding, Rachel is brutally murdered during a visit to their old college. Devastated, Alex sets out to discover the truth behind how this came to happen to her, and in the process he discovers there was much he did not know about his wife.
I surely can't be alone in thinking that isn't romantic for a successful, wealthy, highly intelligent, cultured and presumably attractive man to remain fixated on a girl from university for so many years afterwards. It's weird, and kind of unbelievable. It isn't romantic that Rachel would want to marry him so suddenly and then appear to be so deeply in love with him immediately. Again, it's weird, and very unbelievable. And there's absolutely nothing strange or mysterious about Alex discovering that Rachel had a lot of secrets - it's a fact that he barely knew her. Aside from which, we're told that Rachel a) refused to ever discuss the past and b) snapped and shouted at Alex whenever he tried to ask her about the ONE family member that's a part of her life. All of which left me wondering what, exactly, it was that he expected? I found this 'romance' so odd and unbelievable that I could barely believe it was supposed to be taken seriously; adding to this negativity was the fact that neither Alex nor Rachel were portrayed as likeable people. At an early stage, I began to suspect that .
Enough of the bad points. I'm dwelling on them perhaps a little more than is necessary because I'm angry that they tarnished a story that might otherwise have become a genuine favourite. Every Contact Leaves a Trace is a rich, atmospheric book, filled with layers of intrigue and emotional turmoil, set against a meticulously detailed background which is a tantalising mixture of academia and debauchery. When Alex listens to the tale told by Harry, Rachel's former tutor, the author's style really comes into its own - I found this past narrative, in which we learn about Rachel's student days as part of an exceptionally close-knit group of three, far more engaging than the present-day narrative.
In spite of its one big flaw, this was absolutely my kind of book, and I really did savour reading it. This is a narrative that takes its time to unfold, lingering over small details and lengthy ruminations, but this is in no way a bad thing. The slower-than-average pace suits the twisting journey of the plot, told in suitably elegant prose. Every Contact Leaves a Trace is a great debut, and being a debut, I'm willing to forgive its imperfections. The main issue, in fact, is that the rest of it is so good, the problematic 'love story' stands out all the more. Despite the fact that this review has probably ended up sounding more negative than positive, I do thoroughly recommend this book.
November 4, 2021
This really was an odd book. An example of me choosing an audio from my library's BorrowBox platform, rather than choosing a book I want to read. So this needs to teach me to stop doing this! This is classed as a literary thriller. I wasn't thrilled. I was bored.
In fact I was waiting for something to happen, it was a slow burn that reached a flat crescendo and I was not left feeling fulfilled or satisfied in any way.
Set in an English university it chronicles the murder of Rachel, a character we never seem to get to know properly, but which we eventually do somewhat through her bereaved widow Alex. This man was quite likeable, but had to sort through so much rigmarole to the real story of his wife's tragic ending.
A trio of young and carefree students bound by literature, and their involvement with their tutor Henry, Alex was an outsider having studied law, the trio were an odd bunch where passion, sex and lies were rife. Lucky for Alex being able to eventually sort through the circumstances and his profession, this meant there was some hope for the truth being set free.
Henry invites Alex back to the university and thus begins a very slow telling of events. Lots of talk of tea drinking and comments on the weather.
This was full of unlikeable characters, most of all Rachel's Godmother, who never cared for Rachel in the way you would expect of one in such an important position. Rachel was damaged and unique, and I guess this was the only result for me of the slow burn. Even the last few lines were generic. so unfortunately this book did not tickle my fancy.
In fact I was waiting for something to happen, it was a slow burn that reached a flat crescendo and I was not left feeling fulfilled or satisfied in any way.
Set in an English university it chronicles the murder of Rachel, a character we never seem to get to know properly, but which we eventually do somewhat through her bereaved widow Alex. This man was quite likeable, but had to sort through so much rigmarole to the real story of his wife's tragic ending.
A trio of young and carefree students bound by literature, and their involvement with their tutor Henry, Alex was an outsider having studied law, the trio were an odd bunch where passion, sex and lies were rife. Lucky for Alex being able to eventually sort through the circumstances and his profession, this meant there was some hope for the truth being set free.
Henry invites Alex back to the university and thus begins a very slow telling of events. Lots of talk of tea drinking and comments on the weather.
This was full of unlikeable characters, most of all Rachel's Godmother, who never cared for Rachel in the way you would expect of one in such an important position. Rachel was damaged and unique, and I guess this was the only result for me of the slow burn. Even the last few lines were generic. so unfortunately this book did not tickle my fancy.
August 4, 2012
A literary thriller set in Oxford, about a man trying to find the truth behind his wife's murder sounded good to me, but unfortunately it turned out to be mind-numbingly dull. The characters are utterly lifeless (well, some more than others) and the unearthing of the "mystery" is so tedious I was surprised the protagonist didn't just give up out of sheer boredom.
The love story was supposed to be romantic, but it wasn't for me, since I am a sane person. I hate it when authors present some horribly dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship as romance. Here's how it goes: Rachel tells Alex, who barely knows her, that she can never tell him about her dark past, that he can never know her, and that in order to prove his unconditional love for her, he ought to marry her. Instead of running off like his hair's on fire, he marries her. And somehow this is supposed to be proof of their undying love for each other? These people are batshit crazy.
The dialogue is not like anything I've ever heard in real life. The people in this book actually say things like: "The project which I embarked upon [...] has failed, and it has done so catastrophically. I am left with the worst kind of despair." Yes, me too.
I'm sorry to write such a negative review. There are much worse books out there that I've probably rated higher than this one, but I intensely disliked this one. The blurbs led me to think it actually had some literary merit, but it was just pretentious and poorly written.
The love story was supposed to be romantic, but it wasn't for me, since I am a sane person. I hate it when authors present some horribly dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship as romance. Here's how it goes: Rachel tells Alex, who barely knows her, that she can never tell him about her dark past, that he can never know her, and that in order to prove his unconditional love for her, he ought to marry her. Instead of running off like his hair's on fire, he marries her. And somehow this is supposed to be proof of their undying love for each other? These people are batshit crazy.
The dialogue is not like anything I've ever heard in real life. The people in this book actually say things like: "The project which I embarked upon [...] has failed, and it has done so catastrophically. I am left with the worst kind of despair." Yes, me too.
I'm sorry to write such a negative review. There are much worse books out there that I've probably rated higher than this one, but I intensely disliked this one. The blurbs led me to think it actually had some literary merit, but it was just pretentious and poorly written.
August 8, 2012
Two-thirds of the way through this over-long book I came across the line, 'and then she yawned, slowly, and told me to get on with it'. Everything is so drawn out and contrived, whether it's wealthy lawyers and IT geeks who don't possess a laptop or a Blackberry, as that would compromise the plot, or a student who travels from Oxford to Manchester via London Euston! There is also a wonderful moment when the narrator eventually plucks up courage to tell his true love of a terrible accident that destroyed his father's life and led to the death of a childhood friend but before he's finished she's fallen asleep!
September 22, 2012
First there was the book itself. A thing of beauty. The cover design, in black, white and a muted shade of red was lovely, and the page ends in that same shade of red were a perfect finishing touch.
And then there was an opening that promised so much
‘If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don’t know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did…’
Alex and Rachel had met when they were students at the same Oxford college, but they moved in different circles. She had been a shining star and he had been a quiet worker.
Years later they met again, at the wedding of Alex’s closest friend. By then she was an academic and he was a successful solicitor. Something passed between them that day and they were soon married too.
But soon after the wedding they made a pilgrimage to their old college. And Rachel was murdered.
Alex tells his own story as he deals with the aftermath of his wife’s death, with grief, with the realisation that there was much about her that he didn’t know, and finally with his quest to understand how and why Rachel had dies.
That story flows beautifully, in lovely, cool crisp prose.
I felt the grief of this quiet, solitary man, and I understood his need to find out. There were moments when I questioned his reliability, but I came to believe that he was simply a man who didn’t want to accept certain truths, or that there were so many things he hadn’t known.
This phase of the story moved slowly, but the right telling details were illuminated, and the picture was pitch perfect.
And when Alex began to ask questions, when he finally persuaded people he knew were withholding stories about the past from him to talk, I turned the pages quickly, wanting to know the answers, wanting to see how the pieces of the story would fit together almost as much as he did.
There was so much to hold me: rich atmosphere, strong emotions, intriguing questions, literary allusions …
The story of the love between Alex and Rachel was resolved quite beautifully.
The story of the events that had led to Rachel’s death was well executed, but a touch predictable.
Much was said about the subjectivity of truth, the way we construct stories, and the burden of knowledge.
I saw small inconsistencies, small instances of unrealistic behaviour, but while I was reading I was sufficiently caught up with so much that was wonderful that I could let them go.
When I finished the book I saw more that was wrong. For many characters I couldn’t reconcile the background they came from, the young people they were at college, and the adults they had become that decade later.
I tried to tell myself was that maybe it was because there world was not mine, the choices that they made would never have been mine. But I know it was more than that.
And I also know that the many things that were done so well made we want to think less and feel more so that I could still love Every Contact Leaves a Trace.
And then there was an opening that promised so much
‘If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don’t know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did…’
Alex and Rachel had met when they were students at the same Oxford college, but they moved in different circles. She had been a shining star and he had been a quiet worker.
Years later they met again, at the wedding of Alex’s closest friend. By then she was an academic and he was a successful solicitor. Something passed between them that day and they were soon married too.
But soon after the wedding they made a pilgrimage to their old college. And Rachel was murdered.
Alex tells his own story as he deals with the aftermath of his wife’s death, with grief, with the realisation that there was much about her that he didn’t know, and finally with his quest to understand how and why Rachel had dies.
That story flows beautifully, in lovely, cool crisp prose.
I felt the grief of this quiet, solitary man, and I understood his need to find out. There were moments when I questioned his reliability, but I came to believe that he was simply a man who didn’t want to accept certain truths, or that there were so many things he hadn’t known.
This phase of the story moved slowly, but the right telling details were illuminated, and the picture was pitch perfect.
And when Alex began to ask questions, when he finally persuaded people he knew were withholding stories about the past from him to talk, I turned the pages quickly, wanting to know the answers, wanting to see how the pieces of the story would fit together almost as much as he did.
There was so much to hold me: rich atmosphere, strong emotions, intriguing questions, literary allusions …
The story of the love between Alex and Rachel was resolved quite beautifully.
The story of the events that had led to Rachel’s death was well executed, but a touch predictable.
Much was said about the subjectivity of truth, the way we construct stories, and the burden of knowledge.
I saw small inconsistencies, small instances of unrealistic behaviour, but while I was reading I was sufficiently caught up with so much that was wonderful that I could let them go.
When I finished the book I saw more that was wrong. For many characters I couldn’t reconcile the background they came from, the young people they were at college, and the adults they had become that decade later.
I tried to tell myself was that maybe it was because there world was not mine, the choices that they made would never have been mine. But I know it was more than that.
And I also know that the many things that were done so well made we want to think less and feel more so that I could still love Every Contact Leaves a Trace.
October 5, 2013
I really wanted to like this book. The book itself is gorgeous with red lined pages. However, the writing style soon proved to be too much like watching molasses run uphill...in January. It took quite a while for the story to get going and when it did, it was constantly interrupted. I found this to completely destroy my concentration and soon began to disengage from it. I had figured out who "done it" very early in book and kept waiting for the rest of the characters to get up to speed. I've certainly read worse books than this but few have been such a disappointment.
January 19, 2019
2.5 stars rounded up (I'm being generous for my first review, I guess!)
I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded very interesting and I was intrigued by the description of part love story, part murder mystery. Unfortunately, Every Contact Leaves a Trace did not deliver on either for me.
My biggest problem with the book was the author's stream of consciousness, meandering style. I was fine with the non-linear structure but the author's style made this book very slow to read and almost boring at times. This book would have benefited from some serious editing (almost 100 pages worth of editing probably). The book only started getting interesting in the second half but at that point, I just wanted to finish it already.
I also found issue with the characters. While the author does flesh them out nicely, her characters are not likable or relatable. In fact, I found it hard to root for Alex to uncover who murdered his wife; I definitely felt sorry for Alex but his stream of consciousness thinking made him quite annoying as a narrator.
Lastly, I felt that the author could have done more to make the "mystery" part of this book more mysterious. I always try to guess who the murderer is and I enjoy it when my guess is wrong and the author is able to trick me when the murderer is revealed. In this book, it was obvious to me early on who the murderer was. When the reveal happened, I was correct in my guess but at that point, I just didn't care.
All in all, a disappointing read. For me, the book did not deliver on its premise. I think the author would benefit from editing and refining of style. However, this book was her debut and I would be willing to try her more recent books.
(This is my first review. I've been on Goodreads over a year now and I figured it was time! I love reading but I also like writing. Hopefully, this review and future reviews will be helpful to other readers.)
I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded very interesting and I was intrigued by the description of part love story, part murder mystery. Unfortunately, Every Contact Leaves a Trace did not deliver on either for me.
My biggest problem with the book was the author's stream of consciousness, meandering style. I was fine with the non-linear structure but the author's style made this book very slow to read and almost boring at times. This book would have benefited from some serious editing (almost 100 pages worth of editing probably). The book only started getting interesting in the second half but at that point, I just wanted to finish it already.
I also found issue with the characters. While the author does flesh them out nicely, her characters are not likable or relatable. In fact, I found it hard to root for Alex to uncover who murdered his wife; I definitely felt sorry for Alex but his stream of consciousness thinking made him quite annoying as a narrator.
Lastly, I felt that the author could have done more to make the "mystery" part of this book more mysterious. I always try to guess who the murderer is and I enjoy it when my guess is wrong and the author is able to trick me when the murderer is revealed. In this book, it was obvious to me early on who the murderer was. When the reveal happened, I was correct in my guess but at that point, I just didn't care.
All in all, a disappointing read. For me, the book did not deliver on its premise. I think the author would benefit from editing and refining of style. However, this book was her debut and I would be willing to try her more recent books.
(This is my first review. I've been on Goodreads over a year now and I figured it was time! I love reading but I also like writing. Hopefully, this review and future reviews will be helpful to other readers.)
May 24, 2013
London - Oxford setting, undertones of Browning's 'My Last Duchess,' murder mystery, unreliable narrators... unfortunately the book did not carry through on its premise. I was actually mad at the end (having made my way through the trudging, dragged-out, wearisome nature of the narrative), feeling cheated out of what could have been a great story.
Every single character in here is ridiculous and irritating from the clueless, irrational husband Alex to the bumbling Oxford professor (who demonstrates such an inability to think or behave like an educated adult that one has to wonder what how he came to be in his current position), godmother Evie (who is so unlikable it's incomprehensible to me why all of the characters enable her narcissism), and even the murdered wife Rachel. That irritating woman should have been seeing a therapist, not indulging in Midsummer Night rendez-vous or embarking upon a marriage. Rather than feeling sorry for her or her husband, I was annoyed that the story dragged on as long as it did without actually coming to any illuminating or surprising revelations.
A more in-depth character study and delineation, consideration of the Browning poem, and explanation of Rachel's childhood are needed to give this book any sense of compelling narrative or indeed make any of the characters worth reading about.
Every single character in here is ridiculous and irritating from the clueless, irrational husband Alex to the bumbling Oxford professor (who demonstrates such an inability to think or behave like an educated adult that one has to wonder what how he came to be in his current position), godmother Evie (who is so unlikable it's incomprehensible to me why all of the characters enable her narcissism), and even the murdered wife Rachel. That irritating woman should have been seeing a therapist, not indulging in Midsummer Night rendez-vous or embarking upon a marriage. Rather than feeling sorry for her or her husband, I was annoyed that the story dragged on as long as it did without actually coming to any illuminating or surprising revelations.
A more in-depth character study and delineation, consideration of the Browning poem, and explanation of Rachel's childhood are needed to give this book any sense of compelling narrative or indeed make any of the characters worth reading about.
May 15, 2013
So much promise here: unreliable narration, unlikeable characters, Oxford setting. But somehow, despite great writing style, it just misses the mark.
Rachel and Alex met as students at Oxford, had a summerlong fling, and then Rachel broke it off. Years later, at his BFF's wedding, they meet again and somehow end up engaged the next morning. A few months later, Rachel's head is bashed in at night during a visit the two of them take to their old college. Simple enough, right? The question, of course, is Who Killed Rachel and Why. That's where the unreliable part comes from. We hear one story from Harry, Rachel's former tutor, and another from Evie, her godmother who has a real hate on for Alex. Then there's Anthony's story, as told by Harry. While they all loosely mesh, it's clear that there's something Not Quite Right here, that there are layers still hidden. Alex, steeped in grief and not functioning well at work, tries to figure things out even as he is getting ready to go to New York to start his life over.
The biggest problem for me was not that Alex loved Rachel unconditionally (which we're told several times) but that he's so clueless. They knew each other in college, so how could he possibly be so unaware of what she was like? It didn't make sense. Neither did Evie's hate for him, not just post-Rachel's death but when they got married. And the ending? I'm all for ends being left loose, but the Big Clue seemed to be too convenient. Finally, the pacing. It took 200 pages to get really started with the story of What Happened - why?
ARC provided by publisher.
Rachel and Alex met as students at Oxford, had a summerlong fling, and then Rachel broke it off. Years later, at his BFF's wedding, they meet again and somehow end up engaged the next morning. A few months later, Rachel's head is bashed in at night during a visit the two of them take to their old college. Simple enough, right? The question, of course, is Who Killed Rachel and Why. That's where the unreliable part comes from. We hear one story from Harry, Rachel's former tutor, and another from Evie, her godmother who has a real hate on for Alex. Then there's Anthony's story, as told by Harry. While they all loosely mesh, it's clear that there's something Not Quite Right here, that there are layers still hidden. Alex, steeped in grief and not functioning well at work, tries to figure things out even as he is getting ready to go to New York to start his life over.
The biggest problem for me was not that Alex loved Rachel unconditionally (which we're told several times) but that he's so clueless. They knew each other in college, so how could he possibly be so unaware of what she was like? It didn't make sense. Neither did Evie's hate for him, not just post-Rachel's death but when they got married. And the ending? I'm all for ends being left loose, but the Big Clue seemed to be too convenient. Finally, the pacing. It took 200 pages to get really started with the story of What Happened - why?
ARC provided by publisher.
August 31, 2013
On the new book shelf. I took back The Morels after 80 pages. It was cold. I exchanged it for this book. Also cold. It took many pages for me to stop editing. Repeated phrases, adjectives, comma-ed phrases that could have been left out altogether. It reads like testimony about a love story, a police procedural of a murder investigation conducted by interested albeit emotionally challenged parties, a stalker's diary. The narrator is unreliable because he is not believable. His grief is antiseptically written, a medical examiner's description of a bereaved spouse: cannot sleep, focus at work or get on with his life. There is no character I can turn to for emotional connection. This book is not a murder mystery. I did not care whodunnit. It is not a romance. The characters who claim to be deeply in love are obsessed only. Our library puts a comment sticker on the flyleaf for new book acquisitions. The reader before me wrote "did not finish." I did, but only by flipping until the end.
April 12, 2013
Beautiful writing, rich and lush. Some might think this book is rather wordy, but when the writing is as savory as this, I like wordy just fine and dandy. I was sorry every time I had to stop reading to do something else, would have liked to have read it in one sitting.
If you absolutely have to like the characters in a book, you may find that it is not easy to do here. That is not to say they were not drawn well. I do believe I could pick out the characters of Richard and Lucinda out on the street in a crowd. The love story between Alex and Rachel did not necessarily ring true for me, but everyone is different.
This was a first-reads giveaway and one I thoroughly enjoyed. It is the author's first effort and I will be looking forward to seeing what she has in store for us in the future.
If you absolutely have to like the characters in a book, you may find that it is not easy to do here. That is not to say they were not drawn well. I do believe I could pick out the characters of Richard and Lucinda out on the street in a crowd. The love story between Alex and Rachel did not necessarily ring true for me, but everyone is different.
This was a first-reads giveaway and one I thoroughly enjoyed. It is the author's first effort and I will be looking forward to seeing what she has in store for us in the future.
February 6, 2021
Sorry, but this just wasn't for me. I have had this sitting on my bookshelf for about 8 years; very shallowly, I was first attracted to it by the cover and the red sprayed edges. Sadly, this seemed to turn out to be the best thing of the book. After getting to under 100 pages in, I decided that this just wasn't my cup of tea. I realised that I didn't care about the characters, or the plot. It is meant to be about who killed a young man's wife, and why. But, the plot seemed to meander, and I began to suspect that the actual telling of the tale could have been committed to about 100 pages, and that this would have been a better thing by far.
January 3, 2014
Shove a stick in my eye now, please. I know I am a linear person. This book is driving me insane. I never know if we are in the present or the past because we flip back and forth, sometimes within the same sentence. It jumps all over. I have yet to find a likable character. For one of the few times in my life, I am intentionally not finishing a book. It was a purely painful read. I can't even keep going just to find out who did it or what terrible thing happened one summer. Not worth the mental anguish.
June 26, 2016
Every Contract Leaves a Trace is a slow burner. It lingers over points, with beautifully lyrical language, studies complex relationships and it does it all in its own sweet time. The Oxford setting was fab and that was by far my favourite thing about the book.
Overall it's a cleverly plotted book and one worth spending time with. It could have moved faster but that wouldn't really have fit with the atmosphere of the book. I do feel like I need a lively, snappy paced book now though to counter balance how slow this one was.
Overall it's a cleverly plotted book and one worth spending time with. It could have moved faster but that wouldn't really have fit with the atmosphere of the book. I do feel like I need a lively, snappy paced book now though to counter balance how slow this one was.
February 11, 2015
My rating is really 4.5, though reading the GoodReads reviews so far, I was so surprised to find a number of low ratings that I wanted to swing the odds the other way and gave it 5. I think this is a remarkably strong first novel. I loved it. I got to the end and immediately began again, trying to puzzle out certain aspects. And even after the second read, I went back looking for specific details I hadn't quite sorted out in my own mind.
Obviously there are two things that draw you through (or don't). The most obvious is 'who killed Rachel'. But this is VERY obvious, and not really what the novel is about. The second is the narrative voice, which I found engaging and compelling. It is fairly literary, though. So you either get into the voice or you don't. It is a certain kind of formal English person, an Oxford person. It reminded me more than once of L P Hartley's 'The Go-Between'.
But later there are other mysteries. Why does Alex love Rachel so much? What on earth could have drawn them together? They seem to have little in common. But actually they have a great deal in common. By the time the story is told, for example, both of them are orphans. Both their parents are dead.
And though there is an obvious death right in the middle of the back cover: Alex's young wife Rachel is murdered (no secret from the start), gradually you realise (at least you do second time through) how many deaths are lurking inside these pages.
Rachel's father died of cancer. Her mother killed herself. Her godmother identifies both her mother's body and Rachel's.
Alex's mother dies of something (can't remember what, an illness of some kind). Alex's friend Robbie dies as a child in an accident for which I think Alex feels responsible. But his father (who must have carried the real responsibility and also blame because he is known as 'Dr Death' after Robbie dies), later becomes a hopeless alcoholic, and is finally killed himself in a car crash that the narrator fears at first may not have been accidental. But it was.
Both Alex and Rachel are 'only' children: no siblings. Nobody other than themselves knows what it was like to have their particular childhood. Robbie might have known, but Robbie (who wasn't even Alex's brother) is dead. When Alex and Rachel meet, both are carrying bereavements.
Rachel's goodmother, Evie, a strange woman indeed, is isolated. She takes lovers but not partners.
Harry, Rachel's Oxford tutor and surrogate father, loses his wife before the story begins. She dies of cancer. So he is bereaved twice during the course of the novel: first his wife, then Rachel. But he feels partly to blame for Rachel's death, just as both Alex and his father share the blame for Robbie's death.
The students study Browning. In particular, the monologue 'Porphyria's Lover' features. In which, of course, a notable murder occurs. But many of Browning's dramatic monologues foreground deaths, as well as notoriously unreliable narrators. Here, though, the main narrator (Alex) can (I think) be trusted. I kept expecting that he might not be wholly trustworthy, but actually I think he is.
Nobody knows about Robbie's death except the reader and the narrator. Alex is going to tell Rachel, but when he thinks he has done so (a marvellous moment), he finds she was asleep in his arms and never heard a thing. At another point in the narrative, he is about to tell another friend (Richard, I think), but never does.
Rachel's two strange Oxford friends, Cissy and Anthony, are also loners. Neither seems to have a sibling. It is clear from both of their backgrounds and behaviours that their childhoods have left them unhinged, in one sense or another.
Nobody in the novel is okay, except possibly Alex's friends Richard and Lucinda -- but their wedding is an uneasy event, where everything seems somehow not quite convincing. Even the miniature sexual event between Alex and Rachel is weirdly unconvincing. Sex in the whole novel is particularly odd, in fact.
In the end, it's not who killed Rachel that is after all so very interesting, or surprising. It's who Rachel was -- and why on earth Alex grieves for her so deeply. I'm still not sure who she was. One GoodReads reviewer says Rachel was so annoying that the reviewer would cheerfully have bumped her off herself. I think that's partly missing the point. Yes, Rachel is horrible. Or her behaviour is (there is an important difference). But in the end, she is also both psychologically and literally vulnerable. It is possible to see that her unappealing behaviours, especially the sexual ones, were symptoms of damage. And that Alex offered her a route to being a different kind of person, a route that was neatly removed from her. Just as he has lost the woman who may have given him back the sort of comfort and love he once found in his mother.
Speaking of which, even Alex's mother, while still in full health, suffers the bereavement of having her son sent away to boarding school.
The idea that one of Rachel's former friends, Anthony, became obsessed with the idea of an apology, that Rachel should apologise for what she did to him, particularly interested me, though I'm not totally sure it was fully developed. The idea of apology, I mean.
But Rachel did feel very guilty. And Alex felt guilty for Robbie's death. And Harry felt guilty for Rachel's death.
And Alex, in the end, just knows that he loved her anyway and will continue to do so. It doesn't matter what she was like or who she was, he did love her. The love is essentially romantic. Kill one of the lovers off (or even, in Shakespeare's R & J, both of them) and the love will last forever. If Rachel had survived, things might have been put to a different test.
So many aspects of this novel are fascinating. I got to the end once, twice, and was desperate to talk to someone about it. I have barely touched on the various levels of interest here. The style for me was compelling and distinctive. Not an 'easy read' but plenty to go on, and plenty to go back to; somewhere between thriller and literary novel. As I said at the start, an amazingly strong first novel.
My feeling is that Elanor Dymott has only begun to show what she can do. There is no chance that I'll miss her second book.
Obviously there are two things that draw you through (or don't). The most obvious is 'who killed Rachel'. But this is VERY obvious, and not really what the novel is about. The second is the narrative voice, which I found engaging and compelling. It is fairly literary, though. So you either get into the voice or you don't. It is a certain kind of formal English person, an Oxford person. It reminded me more than once of L P Hartley's 'The Go-Between'.
But later there are other mysteries. Why does Alex love Rachel so much? What on earth could have drawn them together? They seem to have little in common. But actually they have a great deal in common. By the time the story is told, for example, both of them are orphans. Both their parents are dead.
And though there is an obvious death right in the middle of the back cover: Alex's young wife Rachel is murdered (no secret from the start), gradually you realise (at least you do second time through) how many deaths are lurking inside these pages.
Rachel's father died of cancer. Her mother killed herself. Her godmother identifies both her mother's body and Rachel's.
Alex's mother dies of something (can't remember what, an illness of some kind). Alex's friend Robbie dies as a child in an accident for which I think Alex feels responsible. But his father (who must have carried the real responsibility and also blame because he is known as 'Dr Death' after Robbie dies), later becomes a hopeless alcoholic, and is finally killed himself in a car crash that the narrator fears at first may not have been accidental. But it was.
Both Alex and Rachel are 'only' children: no siblings. Nobody other than themselves knows what it was like to have their particular childhood. Robbie might have known, but Robbie (who wasn't even Alex's brother) is dead. When Alex and Rachel meet, both are carrying bereavements.
Rachel's goodmother, Evie, a strange woman indeed, is isolated. She takes lovers but not partners.
Harry, Rachel's Oxford tutor and surrogate father, loses his wife before the story begins. She dies of cancer. So he is bereaved twice during the course of the novel: first his wife, then Rachel. But he feels partly to blame for Rachel's death, just as both Alex and his father share the blame for Robbie's death.
The students study Browning. In particular, the monologue 'Porphyria's Lover' features. In which, of course, a notable murder occurs. But many of Browning's dramatic monologues foreground deaths, as well as notoriously unreliable narrators. Here, though, the main narrator (Alex) can (I think) be trusted. I kept expecting that he might not be wholly trustworthy, but actually I think he is.
Nobody knows about Robbie's death except the reader and the narrator. Alex is going to tell Rachel, but when he thinks he has done so (a marvellous moment), he finds she was asleep in his arms and never heard a thing. At another point in the narrative, he is about to tell another friend (Richard, I think), but never does.
Rachel's two strange Oxford friends, Cissy and Anthony, are also loners. Neither seems to have a sibling. It is clear from both of their backgrounds and behaviours that their childhoods have left them unhinged, in one sense or another.
Nobody in the novel is okay, except possibly Alex's friends Richard and Lucinda -- but their wedding is an uneasy event, where everything seems somehow not quite convincing. Even the miniature sexual event between Alex and Rachel is weirdly unconvincing. Sex in the whole novel is particularly odd, in fact.
In the end, it's not who killed Rachel that is after all so very interesting, or surprising. It's who Rachel was -- and why on earth Alex grieves for her so deeply. I'm still not sure who she was. One GoodReads reviewer says Rachel was so annoying that the reviewer would cheerfully have bumped her off herself. I think that's partly missing the point. Yes, Rachel is horrible. Or her behaviour is (there is an important difference). But in the end, she is also both psychologically and literally vulnerable. It is possible to see that her unappealing behaviours, especially the sexual ones, were symptoms of damage. And that Alex offered her a route to being a different kind of person, a route that was neatly removed from her. Just as he has lost the woman who may have given him back the sort of comfort and love he once found in his mother.
Speaking of which, even Alex's mother, while still in full health, suffers the bereavement of having her son sent away to boarding school.
The idea that one of Rachel's former friends, Anthony, became obsessed with the idea of an apology, that Rachel should apologise for what she did to him, particularly interested me, though I'm not totally sure it was fully developed. The idea of apology, I mean.
But Rachel did feel very guilty. And Alex felt guilty for Robbie's death. And Harry felt guilty for Rachel's death.
And Alex, in the end, just knows that he loved her anyway and will continue to do so. It doesn't matter what she was like or who she was, he did love her. The love is essentially romantic. Kill one of the lovers off (or even, in Shakespeare's R & J, both of them) and the love will last forever. If Rachel had survived, things might have been put to a different test.
So many aspects of this novel are fascinating. I got to the end once, twice, and was desperate to talk to someone about it. I have barely touched on the various levels of interest here. The style for me was compelling and distinctive. Not an 'easy read' but plenty to go on, and plenty to go back to; somewhere between thriller and literary novel. As I said at the start, an amazingly strong first novel.
My feeling is that Elanor Dymott has only begun to show what she can do. There is no chance that I'll miss her second book.
July 23, 2018
Nou van mij mag dit boek verdwijnen. Te veel grof taalgebruik. Ik was al heel snel klaar met lezen. Geen ster. ;)
Read
January 27, 2020A woman dies under mysterious circumstances while revisiting university in the UK. Bereaved husband (under suspicion) reflects on their romance. I loved this kind of story in the past, but this one felt as if it was moving in super slo-mo. Not for me.
July 12, 2012
Every Contact Leaves a Trace is Elanor Dymott’s first novel, and is best described as a literary whodoneit. The setting is the University of Oxford. The main characters are students or academic staff, or closely associated with the University. The story is narrated by Richard, now a lawyer in early middle age. At the start of the novel he meets, apparently by accident, Rachel, with whom he has been at University. We know very quickly that the two have a shared past, but the details of their previous relationship are only revealed slowly during the course of the novel.
Very rapidly, Richard and Rachel marry and settle down into what appears to be idyllic married life. Before long has passed, they pay a visit to Oxford to visit an ex-tutor, Harry. After dinner Rachel goes for a walk in the College Garden and is violently killed. The core of the novel is the gradual unravelling by Richard of what may have happened to his wife, and the reasons behind it. Every Contact Leaves a Trace has a small cast of characters. Apart from Richard, Rachel and Harry, only three others play a major role. Anthony and Cassie were the other members of Rachel’s tutorial group at College, and Evie was her stepmother. There are a number of others who play minor roles, but it is this central group of six who provide the key to what has happened.
There seem to be two key themes at play. Firstly, and introduced in the very first paragraph, is the idea of how little we know about other people, even those closest to us. “If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife”, says Richard, “I would have to warn you at the outset that I don’t know a great deal about her.” But it is not just Rachel about whom Richard knows little; the same can be said about many of the other characters. And when they speak about themselves, it is generally to reveal only partial truths or sometimes lies. Even Richard only slowly and partially reveals his deepest truths to others, and to the reader. Linked to this is the idea of the unreliability of memory. Frequently during the novel, Richard recalls previous events or fragments of them which increase his understanding of what is happening in the present. Often such recall is triggered by some chance present event, like the taste of the Madeleine in Remembrance of Things Past or the sound of Norwegian Wood in Haruki Murakami’s novel of the same name.
Secondly, is the idea that we need to create a narrative to allow us to make sense of disparate facts, and that until we settle on a narrative we are likely to be uncomfortable with ourselves and others. In Every Contact, some characters weave their narrative to fit the facts (Richard, an analytical lawyer), while others mould the facts to fit their preferred narrative (Harry). Even at the end we are not quite sure if the truth has been revealed.
Overall, I enjoyed Every Contact, but felt that the gradual reveal was overdone. Atmosphere and tension were built reasonably well, but the grief of Richard was overdone, and his gradual recall of key events from his past became a little repetitive. Once, maybe, but several times was too much. The novel could have lost one quarter of its length with some firm editing without losing its impact, and it would probably have gained strength from the process. However, overall a worthwhile read and an author to watch in the future.
Very rapidly, Richard and Rachel marry and settle down into what appears to be idyllic married life. Before long has passed, they pay a visit to Oxford to visit an ex-tutor, Harry. After dinner Rachel goes for a walk in the College Garden and is violently killed. The core of the novel is the gradual unravelling by Richard of what may have happened to his wife, and the reasons behind it. Every Contact Leaves a Trace has a small cast of characters. Apart from Richard, Rachel and Harry, only three others play a major role. Anthony and Cassie were the other members of Rachel’s tutorial group at College, and Evie was her stepmother. There are a number of others who play minor roles, but it is this central group of six who provide the key to what has happened.
There seem to be two key themes at play. Firstly, and introduced in the very first paragraph, is the idea of how little we know about other people, even those closest to us. “If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife”, says Richard, “I would have to warn you at the outset that I don’t know a great deal about her.” But it is not just Rachel about whom Richard knows little; the same can be said about many of the other characters. And when they speak about themselves, it is generally to reveal only partial truths or sometimes lies. Even Richard only slowly and partially reveals his deepest truths to others, and to the reader. Linked to this is the idea of the unreliability of memory. Frequently during the novel, Richard recalls previous events or fragments of them which increase his understanding of what is happening in the present. Often such recall is triggered by some chance present event, like the taste of the Madeleine in Remembrance of Things Past or the sound of Norwegian Wood in Haruki Murakami’s novel of the same name.
Secondly, is the idea that we need to create a narrative to allow us to make sense of disparate facts, and that until we settle on a narrative we are likely to be uncomfortable with ourselves and others. In Every Contact, some characters weave their narrative to fit the facts (Richard, an analytical lawyer), while others mould the facts to fit their preferred narrative (Harry). Even at the end we are not quite sure if the truth has been revealed.
Overall, I enjoyed Every Contact, but felt that the gradual reveal was overdone. Atmosphere and tension were built reasonably well, but the grief of Richard was overdone, and his gradual recall of key events from his past became a little repetitive. Once, maybe, but several times was too much. The novel could have lost one quarter of its length with some firm editing without losing its impact, and it would probably have gained strength from the process. However, overall a worthwhile read and an author to watch in the future.
June 17, 2013
I picked this book up simply because it caught my eye while I was skimming the titles in Waterstones; the words "Every Contact Leaves A Trace" stuck in my mind not as the title of another book, but more so as a brutally honest conclusion. Dymott spares no expense in proving that all fragments of the past do eventually haunt us again through the explanation of Rachel Cardanine's murder. Trying to grasp the few facts he can of the events leading up to his wife's death, Alex discovers that Rachel has been keeping more from him than he believed - shocking truths are revealed, leading Alex to question how much he really knew about Rachel, if anything at all.
The thing that fascinates me most about this book is that the story is focused around revealing stories. Despite the mystery of the murder and the several love encounters surrounding it, Every Contact Leaves A Trace does not focus on any of these commonly used themes. Instead, the frustrating yet inevitable futility of searching is highlighted; a theme most can relate to in that no matter how much one sheds light on a subject, the fact remains that it will always be just as painful as when the investigation began. The salvation lies in the way in which the light is shed, and Dymott takes an enticing approach to revealing the truth behind Rachel's murder - we find ourselves reveling in the journey of the story rather than the story's ending itself.
That being said, Dymott teased readers a tad too brutally in the sense that the story often rambled on for a few pages before returning back to the topic. I took this to be Dymott's style of writing rather than a weakness; the swerves in the story gave time for the reader to process information, which was much appreciated considering the amount that was thrown at us.
An excellent read - if you're willing to forgive the first 70 or so pages, Every Contact Leaves A Trace is unputdownable.
The thing that fascinates me most about this book is that the story is focused around revealing stories. Despite the mystery of the murder and the several love encounters surrounding it, Every Contact Leaves A Trace does not focus on any of these commonly used themes. Instead, the frustrating yet inevitable futility of searching is highlighted; a theme most can relate to in that no matter how much one sheds light on a subject, the fact remains that it will always be just as painful as when the investigation began. The salvation lies in the way in which the light is shed, and Dymott takes an enticing approach to revealing the truth behind Rachel's murder - we find ourselves reveling in the journey of the story rather than the story's ending itself.
That being said, Dymott teased readers a tad too brutally in the sense that the story often rambled on for a few pages before returning back to the topic. I took this to be Dymott's style of writing rather than a weakness; the swerves in the story gave time for the reader to process information, which was much appreciated considering the amount that was thrown at us.
An excellent read - if you're willing to forgive the first 70 or so pages, Every Contact Leaves A Trace is unputdownable.
May 18, 2013
Alex Petersen's wife of just a few months has been brutally murdered on the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College at Oxford. Rachel went down to the lake to meet someone and her head was bashed in with a stone. Alex goes into a deep depression and has to leave his job as an attorney in order to process his grief.
Alex decides that he wants to find out the truth about Rachel's murder as the police investigation is at a standstill. Harry, Rachel's tutor and mentor at Oxford, believes he knows the answers about Rachel's death. He invites Alex to come to Oxford and spend time with him so he can tell Alex his theories about the murder. Alex spends some days listening to Harry and finds out a lot about Rachel's life that he knew nothing about. When Rachel was a student she was involved in erotic activities with two other students that included extensive use of alcohol. These students, Anthony and Cissy, had reason to be jealous of, and angry at Rachel. He learns about Rachel's life with her godmother Evie who raised Rachel after the death of her parents when she was a child. Evie and Rachel had been estranged for many years and Evie was jealous of Rachel. Harry's narration of his theories may or may not be true and Alex is torn about what to believe. He is on the brink of going to New York from London to start a new job but first wants some closure about what happened to Rachel.
This novel is very character driven and very British. Fans of Tana French will delight in Elanor Dymott's debut novel. The beginning of the novel starts off slowly and meanders a bit until it gets to the meat of things. At that point, it spills out like an oil slick and twists and turns in every direction. I was stymied until the very end about who murdered Rachel. This is a superb novel and I highly recommend it.
Alex decides that he wants to find out the truth about Rachel's murder as the police investigation is at a standstill. Harry, Rachel's tutor and mentor at Oxford, believes he knows the answers about Rachel's death. He invites Alex to come to Oxford and spend time with him so he can tell Alex his theories about the murder. Alex spends some days listening to Harry and finds out a lot about Rachel's life that he knew nothing about. When Rachel was a student she was involved in erotic activities with two other students that included extensive use of alcohol. These students, Anthony and Cissy, had reason to be jealous of, and angry at Rachel. He learns about Rachel's life with her godmother Evie who raised Rachel after the death of her parents when she was a child. Evie and Rachel had been estranged for many years and Evie was jealous of Rachel. Harry's narration of his theories may or may not be true and Alex is torn about what to believe. He is on the brink of going to New York from London to start a new job but first wants some closure about what happened to Rachel.
This novel is very character driven and very British. Fans of Tana French will delight in Elanor Dymott's debut novel. The beginning of the novel starts off slowly and meanders a bit until it gets to the meat of things. At that point, it spills out like an oil slick and twists and turns in every direction. I was stymied until the very end about who murdered Rachel. This is a superb novel and I highly recommend it.
September 18, 2014
Turgid is the word that springs to mind after slogging through sentences that sound like they were translated from Goethe. First and foremost, don't believe anyone who compares this book to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, a beautifully-written book with fascinating characters, a plot that moves coherently towards a tragic end. Dymott's book is peopled with characters who are profoundly boring, unlikeable, revolting, or annoying. One doesn't care that Rachel is murdered and, when we finally find out who did it, what a let down!
Technically, the author breaks all writing rules ever invented. It all tell and no show. The chronology is so Byzantine as to be unintelligible. The writing suffers from long, confusing sentences: 30 words when 10 would have sufficed. I am at a loss as to why people gave it such glowing reviews. It reads like an undergraduate, poorly edited paper.
The author utilizes the device of having the tutor recount the actual chain of events from his point of view, resulting in an unsatisfying narrative. We merely sit with Rachel's lackluster husband and listen to a lengthy accounting of events. In very quick succession, all loose plot lines are resolved, because of an errant email postscript that suddenly ties everything up very neatly. Most disappointing is the explanation behind the murder - it defies logic that the events as described in Harry's narrative would be the catalyst for a murder many years later. It seems like a poor excuse for a very violent crime, and all the secrets that are kept by various individuals in order for the murder to occur are equally incredulous. It's about as comparable to The Secret History as a Shopaholic novel is to Moby Dick.
If you must read it, take it out of the library.
Technically, the author breaks all writing rules ever invented. It all tell and no show. The chronology is so Byzantine as to be unintelligible. The writing suffers from long, confusing sentences: 30 words when 10 would have sufficed. I am at a loss as to why people gave it such glowing reviews. It reads like an undergraduate, poorly edited paper.
The author utilizes the device of having the tutor recount the actual chain of events from his point of view, resulting in an unsatisfying narrative. We merely sit with Rachel's lackluster husband and listen to a lengthy accounting of events. In very quick succession, all loose plot lines are resolved, because of an errant email postscript that suddenly ties everything up very neatly. Most disappointing is the explanation behind the murder - it defies logic that the events as described in Harry's narrative would be the catalyst for a murder many years later. It seems like a poor excuse for a very violent crime, and all the secrets that are kept by various individuals in order for the murder to occur are equally incredulous. It's about as comparable to The Secret History as a Shopaholic novel is to Moby Dick.
If you must read it, take it out of the library.
January 5, 2015
"Every contact leaves a trace" may be the basic principle of forensic science, but don't expect a CSI-style procedural. The phrase is used in a more interpersonal sense, to mean that every contact with a person – in this case the narrator's murdered wife – leaves a trail of evidence that can be followed.
Introverted lawyer Alex is devastated when his vivacious academic wife, Rachel, is killed during a visit to their alma mater: Worcester College, Oxford. He can't think of why anyone would want to harm Rachel, and through the chaos of his grief he feels only confusion. But as he begins to discuss Rachel's life with Harry, her university tutor, and Evie, her intelligent and self-centered godmother, he soon discovers that he did not know Rachel at all. Versions of reality constantly shift as Alex learns more about the people in Rachel's past – and questions how he fits into the story.
Full of over-long sentences and extended descriptions of Alex's thought processes, this is not a fast-paced crime thriller. Despite this, the tension builds wonderfully and keeps the reader guessing throughout. The jumps in time and the shifts from present to past tense can be confusing, but this all helps add to the sense of Alex's drifting sense of reality. Fans of Donna Tartt, Ruth Rendell and Susan Hill will find much to enjoy in this snowy, slow-paced psychological mystery.
Introverted lawyer Alex is devastated when his vivacious academic wife, Rachel, is killed during a visit to their alma mater: Worcester College, Oxford. He can't think of why anyone would want to harm Rachel, and through the chaos of his grief he feels only confusion. But as he begins to discuss Rachel's life with Harry, her university tutor, and Evie, her intelligent and self-centered godmother, he soon discovers that he did not know Rachel at all. Versions of reality constantly shift as Alex learns more about the people in Rachel's past – and questions how he fits into the story.
Full of over-long sentences and extended descriptions of Alex's thought processes, this is not a fast-paced crime thriller. Despite this, the tension builds wonderfully and keeps the reader guessing throughout. The jumps in time and the shifts from present to past tense can be confusing, but this all helps add to the sense of Alex's drifting sense of reality. Fans of Donna Tartt, Ruth Rendell and Susan Hill will find much to enjoy in this snowy, slow-paced psychological mystery.
July 17, 2018
Although I read this book all the way to the end, it has left very little trace in my mind. I will look back at the book in a moment to bring it back to life, but before I do, here's what I thought as I was reading: it's extremely unpleasant to read a book in the first person by a narrator that you don't care for surrounded by people that you care for even less.
The book is a strange tale, ever so carefully constructed in its slow reveal, in its circling the same events over and over again until we see a clear picture of how the narrator's spoiled and careless wife meets her sorry end on the shores of a peaceful Oxford lake at midnight. The wife's godmother, who raised her is cold and odious. The wife's professor, who hides the secrets of her death, is cold and self-indulgent. The husband is a cold and tenacious lawyer, who nevertheless loved the dead wife dearly. Despite my wish to uncover the mystery, which led me to finish the tale, I did not enjoy hanging out with these moneyed, priviledged and unpleasant people.
The book is a strange tale, ever so carefully constructed in its slow reveal, in its circling the same events over and over again until we see a clear picture of how the narrator's spoiled and careless wife meets her sorry end on the shores of a peaceful Oxford lake at midnight. The wife's godmother, who raised her is cold and odious. The wife's professor, who hides the secrets of her death, is cold and self-indulgent. The husband is a cold and tenacious lawyer, who nevertheless loved the dead wife dearly. Despite my wish to uncover the mystery, which led me to finish the tale, I did not enjoy hanging out with these moneyed, priviledged and unpleasant people.
December 18, 2012
This is definitely a good book. The problem I have with it is that it could've been a REALLY GREAT book but it doesn't quite get there.
It's overwritten, which is rather forgiveable.
It seems like it could've benefited from a 3rd person rather than 1st person narration, at least it seems that our narrator is really the worst person to be telling this story, given how often he tells us something that someone else has told him that they actually heard from another person entirely until you're in 4 levels of hearsay.
The thing that really started to get to me closer to the end was when some discovery would be made and then deliberately held back for no reason except to prolong the suspense.
That said, I was definitely hooked. Like recent novel, THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS, this was kind of a SECRET HISTORY set at Oxford even if it doesn't seem like it at first.
I'll be keeping my eye on Dymott. I think she's got a lot of potential.
It's overwritten, which is rather forgiveable.
It seems like it could've benefited from a 3rd person rather than 1st person narration, at least it seems that our narrator is really the worst person to be telling this story, given how often he tells us something that someone else has told him that they actually heard from another person entirely until you're in 4 levels of hearsay.
The thing that really started to get to me closer to the end was when some discovery would be made and then deliberately held back for no reason except to prolong the suspense.
That said, I was definitely hooked. Like recent novel, THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS, this was kind of a SECRET HISTORY set at Oxford even if it doesn't seem like it at first.
I'll be keeping my eye on Dymott. I think she's got a lot of potential.
June 30, 2013
This book had such potential. Unfortunately I think the writer tried to be too elusive and clever and ended up not giving us much of anything concrete. I don't mind being left hanging or not being quite sure what just happened but there are just too many things in here that don't make sense or don't have an explanation. The writing itself isn't bad, but the plot is eye rolling. I read this for my book club. In the end we decided it was more about relationships and loss than murder mystery, which inly helped redeem it a little. We had also read 'My Cousin Rachel' by Daphne du Maurier. There were some similarities, but du Maurier executes the uncertainty far better and leaves is with a few intriguing questions, not a million. Having said that, if Dymott writes more novels I would try them. I think she has real potential but just needs to have a bit more focus and not try to do too much at once.
May 10, 2013
I recieved this book for free through goodreads first reads
I love/hated this book. Sometimes I found it confusing and I wasn't sure what was going on. Mostly I really liked it though. It reminded me a lot of Gone Girl, especially because I was totally unsatisfied with the ending. I want to love this book but I just can't get past the feeling like it's leaving me with too many unanswered questions
I love/hated this book. Sometimes I found it confusing and I wasn't sure what was going on. Mostly I really liked it though. It reminded me a lot of Gone Girl, especially because I was totally unsatisfied with the ending. I want to love this book but I just can't get past the feeling like it's leaving me with too many unanswered questions
October 1, 2017
I wanted to like this book but ultimately found it frustrating. The agonisingly slow pace at which parts of the story are revealed, with characters pleading tiredness after umpteen hours of exposition, other characters conveniently falling asleep, and the general perverseness of a story which moves at the speed of an eighteenth century epistolary novel whilst being set in the modern age of instantaneous communication, had me tearing out my hair! Grrr!
May 31, 2013
Right.
Nostalgic for me (student at Oxford in same era). Very evocative. Very and-what-will-happen next.
Badly over-written in parts, excusable for a first novel.
However, bits of it woefully implausible even for Oxford. I realise the narrator i unrealiable, but even so!
September 15, 2013
My new rating system for books that I don't finish get a one star. The description sounded intriguing but I made it to page 17 and already the "f" word several times and sexual crass references. Not worth my time.
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