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The Night Following
On a blustery April day, the quiet, rather private wife of a doctor discovers that her husband has been having an affair. Moments later, driving along a winding country road and distracted perhaps by her own thoughts, perhaps blinded by sunlight, she fails to see sixty-one-year-old Ruth Mitchell up ahead, riding her bicycle. She hits her, killing her instantly. And drives away.
The hit-and-run driver is never found. But the doctor’s wife, horrified by what she has done, begins to unravel. Soon she turns her attention to Ruth’s bereaved husband, a man staggering sleeplessly through each night, as unhinged by grief as the killer is by guilt.
Arthur Mitchell does not realize at first that someone has begun watching him through his windows, worrying over his disheveled appearance, his increasingly chaotic home. And when at last she steps through his doorway, secretly at first, then more boldly, he is ready to believe that, for reasons beyond his understanding, his wife has somehow been returned to him….
A story of loss, lies, and wrongdoing, astonishingly complex and ingeniously inventive, The Night Following is also a love story and the extraordinarily moving tale of a killer’s journey from the shadows into the light. It confirms the mastery of a writer who is both tender and unflinching in her examination of human frailty—and of the shattering repercussions of deception.
The hit-and-run driver is never found. But the doctor’s wife, horrified by what she has done, begins to unravel. Soon she turns her attention to Ruth’s bereaved husband, a man staggering sleeplessly through each night, as unhinged by grief as the killer is by guilt.
Arthur Mitchell does not realize at first that someone has begun watching him through his windows, worrying over his disheveled appearance, his increasingly chaotic home. And when at last she steps through his doorway, secretly at first, then more boldly, he is ready to believe that, for reasons beyond his understanding, his wife has somehow been returned to him….
A story of loss, lies, and wrongdoing, astonishingly complex and ingeniously inventive, The Night Following is also a love story and the extraordinarily moving tale of a killer’s journey from the shadows into the light. It confirms the mastery of a writer who is both tender and unflinching in her examination of human frailty—and of the shattering repercussions of deception.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
15 people are currently reading
269 people want to read
About the author
Morag Joss
20 books66 followersShe is the author of six novels, including the Sara Selkirk series, and the Silver Dagger winning Half Broken Things. She began writing in 1996 after a short story of hers was runner-up in a national competition sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine. A visit to the Roman Baths with crime writer P.D. James germinated the plot of her first novel, Funeral Music, the first in the Sara Selkirk series, which gained a Dilys Award nomination for the year's best mystery published in the USA.
Series:
* Sarah Selkirk Mystery
Awards:
Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger
◊ 2003: Half-Broken Things
Series:
* Sarah Selkirk Mystery
Awards:
Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger
◊ 2003: Half-Broken Things
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
September 7, 2014
Spoilers Ahead.
Way down amongst the nondescript weeds of modern murder mysteries, there is a distinction that has evolved into a frontier, a line of demarcation. The easiest way to put it is that the Who-Dunit of Sherlockian or Poirovian classicism has parted ways, some would even say moved on, to the trickier and weirder realms of the Why-Dunit.
Implicit here is that the whodunit, a jigsaw puzzle with contradictory clue pathways and intricate plots, is after all only a jigsaw puzzle; the whodunit clicks along like a metronome spreading a trail of butler-yes versus butler-no indicators in its wake. The reader must sift the data and crack the case.
The Why-Dunit, on the opposite hand, cares little for the identity of the killer, which may be known at the beginning anyway-- and goes on an interior kind of search, for the psychology that could lead someone to the point of murdering another human. Think The Cask Of Amontillado. There is no real cracking of the case to be had, there is at most only the sad revelation, in the end, of the pathology at hand, how it grew and flourished in the darkness of the mind.
With Morag Joss' The Night Following, we have a variation on this second kind of mystery, the whydunit, but with a difference. Here there is nothing but missed opportunity and thoughtless cruelty. There is never an actual murder, though there are a couple of deaths. The protagonist in her story is the killer, but-- she is not the murderer. This may seem too fine a distinction, but not for the hardcore, the initiated, the epicures... who will agree with me.
Make no mistake; to have a murder mystery, you must first have, in one form or another, a Murder. A killing is not the same, a manslaughter is not the same; the depth and total divide between humanity, and a murderer, is fundamental-- complete and unconscionably horrific.
But to have a Murder Mystery, the murder you have must have something specific ahead of it, something within it, something devious called malice aforethought, and can never be mistaken for a simple wrongful death, tragic as that may be on its own merits.
Morag Joss' beautifully written "The Night Following" has many elements of mystery narrative plot and style, many of the same kinds of pathways and patterns. But it is something else entirely, something along the lines of what Barbara Vine is to Ruth Rendell, an exploration of empathy and identity, a mystery of the faith, in a near-religious sense; but not a Murder Mystery.
Way down amongst the nondescript weeds of modern murder mysteries, there is a distinction that has evolved into a frontier, a line of demarcation. The easiest way to put it is that the Who-Dunit of Sherlockian or Poirovian classicism has parted ways, some would even say moved on, to the trickier and weirder realms of the Why-Dunit.
Implicit here is that the whodunit, a jigsaw puzzle with contradictory clue pathways and intricate plots, is after all only a jigsaw puzzle; the whodunit clicks along like a metronome spreading a trail of butler-yes versus butler-no indicators in its wake. The reader must sift the data and crack the case.
The Why-Dunit, on the opposite hand, cares little for the identity of the killer, which may be known at the beginning anyway-- and goes on an interior kind of search, for the psychology that could lead someone to the point of murdering another human. Think The Cask Of Amontillado. There is no real cracking of the case to be had, there is at most only the sad revelation, in the end, of the pathology at hand, how it grew and flourished in the darkness of the mind.
With Morag Joss' The Night Following, we have a variation on this second kind of mystery, the whydunit, but with a difference. Here there is nothing but missed opportunity and thoughtless cruelty. There is never an actual murder, though there are a couple of deaths. The protagonist in her story is the killer, but-- she is not the murderer. This may seem too fine a distinction, but not for the hardcore, the initiated, the epicures... who will agree with me.
Make no mistake; to have a murder mystery, you must first have, in one form or another, a Murder. A killing is not the same, a manslaughter is not the same; the depth and total divide between humanity, and a murderer, is fundamental-- complete and unconscionably horrific.
But to have a Murder Mystery, the murder you have must have something specific ahead of it, something within it, something devious called malice aforethought, and can never be mistaken for a simple wrongful death, tragic as that may be on its own merits.
Morag Joss' beautifully written "The Night Following" has many elements of mystery narrative plot and style, many of the same kinds of pathways and patterns. But it is something else entirely, something along the lines of what Barbara Vine is to Ruth Rendell, an exploration of empathy and identity, a mystery of the faith, in a near-religious sense; but not a Murder Mystery.
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November 20, 2014I like "people" books - books about people, how they think, what makes them tick, why they do what they do. I like to ponder how I might behave if I was in their shoes. I like characters who are credible, believable, characters I can cheer on or yell "no, don't!" at. I like to care. Not many authors can make me care. Those who do become friends for life.
Morag Joss is now my friend for life. This is high quality writing; carefully crafted, neither sparse nor flowery, with a skilfully handled three-stranded plot that carried me along effortlessly. It's totally believable, horribly compelling without being melodramatic, heartbreaking but never sentimental.
So, what if that had been me? If I'd been the one responsible for the death of another? What might I have done? I'm left with the very uneasy feeling that I might well have behaved just as her character did.
This book is not about monsters who come out of the dark to get us. There are no mad axemen, no car chases, no paedophiles, no guns or drugs. It's about how any one of us could unravel, come apart, 'lose it'. And that to me is more terrifying than a shedload of serial killers.
Morag Joss is now my friend for life. This is high quality writing; carefully crafted, neither sparse nor flowery, with a skilfully handled three-stranded plot that carried me along effortlessly. It's totally believable, horribly compelling without being melodramatic, heartbreaking but never sentimental.
So, what if that had been me? If I'd been the one responsible for the death of another? What might I have done? I'm left with the very uneasy feeling that I might well have behaved just as her character did.
This book is not about monsters who come out of the dark to get us. There are no mad axemen, no car chases, no paedophiles, no guns or drugs. It's about how any one of us could unravel, come apart, 'lose it'. And that to me is more terrifying than a shedload of serial killers.
May 3, 2009
The Night Following
By Morag Joss
Morag Joss is originally from Scotland and now lives in England. The Night Following is her sixth novel since 1997. Her books have been adapted for television in Britain and 2007’s Puccini’s Ghosts has been optioned for a major motion picture.
This story starts innocently enough. An anesthesiologist and his wife switch cars for the day so that the good doctor can get his wife’s car serviced. While the wife is loading groceries into her husband’s Saab, she notices a pool of raspberry jam forming on the leather seat. Searching through the glove box for something to clean up the spill, she discovers evidence of her husband’s infidelity. Thoroughly unsettled she starts to drive home and, in her totally distracted state, strikes a bicyclist and kills her. She flees from the scene and hides the Saab in the garage. She takes a tire iron to the Saab, disguising the dent from the accident and leaves the discovered evidence on the top of the car to announce her discovery to her husband.
The rest of the book is really the stories of the victim, a recently retired English teacher and amateur author named Ruth Mitchell, and her husband Arthur. The stories are told in three different ways. The unnamed doctor’s wife narrates some chapters. Other chapters are letters that Arthur writes to his dead wife as therapy. The third way the story unfolds is through a manuscript which Arthur finds in his wife’s writings. The reader surmises about half-way through the story that this manuscript is an autobiographical novel which Ruth was writing when she was killed. It contains much information of which Arthur had been unaware. This all sounds like a jumbled up mess which couldn’t possibly work, but it does. It works spectacularly.
The doctor’s wife becomes obsessed with her victim and also with her victim’s husband. To assuage her guilt she begins to check on Arthur, spying on him through his windows. Arthur’s physical and mental health both begin to deteriorate as he succumbs to rage and despair. He starts staying up nights sorting through his wife’s belongings and ignoring his own well-being. He also resents what he feels are intruding neighbors who try to help. We learn this through his post-mortem letters to Ruth. He also has trouble understanding Ruth’s manuscript which relates a depressing story of child abuse. Meanwhile the doctor’s wife becomes more and more dysfunctional and begins sneaking in to Arthur’s home to clean and cook for him, basically taking over Ruth’s role. This whole story has a macabre and horrible tone comparable to the best fiction of William Trevor (Felicia’s Journey, The Story of Lucy Gault, Cheating at Canasta, etc...). Reading this book is like watching two trains heading towards each other at high speed and not knowing what to do about it. You want to shout at the characters to “STOP!” but you can’t. Watching these characters spin out of control and fall deeper and deeper into despair is truly awful and yet, it is as haunting a book as you could ever read.
The characters are tremendously well-developed, although in a convoluted, innovative way. There is not that much dialogue, unless you consider the letters from Arthur to Ruth or the inner workings of the doctor’s wife’s mind as dialogue. The setting is well described but fairly incidental to the story. There are lots of loose ends at the end of the story. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The last pages of Ruth’s novel were lost during the accident, so we don’t know what happens in this “novel within a novel’s” main character (which we assume is Ruth). We can infer, however, that Ruth and Arthur’s relationship came after. We know what happens to Arthur, but the doctor’s wife’s fate remains a mystery. This book has all of the psychological terror that you find when you read Edgar Allan Poe himself. I highly recommend it.
By Morag Joss
Morag Joss is originally from Scotland and now lives in England. The Night Following is her sixth novel since 1997. Her books have been adapted for television in Britain and 2007’s Puccini’s Ghosts has been optioned for a major motion picture.
This story starts innocently enough. An anesthesiologist and his wife switch cars for the day so that the good doctor can get his wife’s car serviced. While the wife is loading groceries into her husband’s Saab, she notices a pool of raspberry jam forming on the leather seat. Searching through the glove box for something to clean up the spill, she discovers evidence of her husband’s infidelity. Thoroughly unsettled she starts to drive home and, in her totally distracted state, strikes a bicyclist and kills her. She flees from the scene and hides the Saab in the garage. She takes a tire iron to the Saab, disguising the dent from the accident and leaves the discovered evidence on the top of the car to announce her discovery to her husband.
The rest of the book is really the stories of the victim, a recently retired English teacher and amateur author named Ruth Mitchell, and her husband Arthur. The stories are told in three different ways. The unnamed doctor’s wife narrates some chapters. Other chapters are letters that Arthur writes to his dead wife as therapy. The third way the story unfolds is through a manuscript which Arthur finds in his wife’s writings. The reader surmises about half-way through the story that this manuscript is an autobiographical novel which Ruth was writing when she was killed. It contains much information of which Arthur had been unaware. This all sounds like a jumbled up mess which couldn’t possibly work, but it does. It works spectacularly.
The doctor’s wife becomes obsessed with her victim and also with her victim’s husband. To assuage her guilt she begins to check on Arthur, spying on him through his windows. Arthur’s physical and mental health both begin to deteriorate as he succumbs to rage and despair. He starts staying up nights sorting through his wife’s belongings and ignoring his own well-being. He also resents what he feels are intruding neighbors who try to help. We learn this through his post-mortem letters to Ruth. He also has trouble understanding Ruth’s manuscript which relates a depressing story of child abuse. Meanwhile the doctor’s wife becomes more and more dysfunctional and begins sneaking in to Arthur’s home to clean and cook for him, basically taking over Ruth’s role. This whole story has a macabre and horrible tone comparable to the best fiction of William Trevor (Felicia’s Journey, The Story of Lucy Gault, Cheating at Canasta, etc...). Reading this book is like watching two trains heading towards each other at high speed and not knowing what to do about it. You want to shout at the characters to “STOP!” but you can’t. Watching these characters spin out of control and fall deeper and deeper into despair is truly awful and yet, it is as haunting a book as you could ever read.
The characters are tremendously well-developed, although in a convoluted, innovative way. There is not that much dialogue, unless you consider the letters from Arthur to Ruth or the inner workings of the doctor’s wife’s mind as dialogue. The setting is well described but fairly incidental to the story. There are lots of loose ends at the end of the story. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The last pages of Ruth’s novel were lost during the accident, so we don’t know what happens in this “novel within a novel’s” main character (which we assume is Ruth). We can infer, however, that Ruth and Arthur’s relationship came after. We know what happens to Arthur, but the doctor’s wife’s fate remains a mystery. This book has all of the psychological terror that you find when you read Edgar Allan Poe himself. I highly recommend it.
March 2, 2009
This reminded me in its coolness and seeming detachment of Lionel Shriver's novels. Really, there is much boiling emotion and no wonder - a woman who has just discovered that her husband is having an affair accidentally drives into a woman named Ruth, killing her. She drives away and never does turn herself in, but to make amends, she watches over Ruth's widower Arthur (who is falling to pieces, emotionally and physically), first secretly and then so obviously that Arthur thinks she must be the ghost of his dead wife. Arthur writes letters to Ruth and also reads a manuscript written by Ruth, which oddly enough turns out to have a strange connection to the hit-and-run driver.
This is billed - and even cataloged - as a pychological novel and certainly there is much delving (somewhat fruitlessly) into the psyche of Ruth's killer. Her story is a sad one, and has been sad for a couple generations, as we learn - but when she finally starts making decisions and taking actions, they are quite odd indeed. Arthur is a sad and stubborn but likable man - clearly an average sort of fellow and happy to be that way - but Ruth remains an enigma. Where did she get that story she wrote? Did I miss something? Who was she?
In the end, it was all a bit too cool and distant for me - I was interested in the characters but never felt moved by them. Afterward, I felt a great need to plunge into a lively, action-packed children's fantasy - which I promptly did, with great satisfaction and relief.
This is billed - and even cataloged - as a pychological novel and certainly there is much delving (somewhat fruitlessly) into the psyche of Ruth's killer. Her story is a sad one, and has been sad for a couple generations, as we learn - but when she finally starts making decisions and taking actions, they are quite odd indeed. Arthur is a sad and stubborn but likable man - clearly an average sort of fellow and happy to be that way - but Ruth remains an enigma. Where did she get that story she wrote? Did I miss something? Who was she?
In the end, it was all a bit too cool and distant for me - I was interested in the characters but never felt moved by them. Afterward, I felt a great need to plunge into a lively, action-packed children's fantasy - which I promptly did, with great satisfaction and relief.
November 7, 2011
I refuse to give this book anymore time than it has already squelched from me, so this will be quick and painless unlike my reading of the damn thing.
In this book we start with a woman in her husband's car spilling groceries, then when attempting clean up finds an empty condom wrapper in his car. *DUM-DUM* After this our character finds herself in some sort of fugue state, wait for it *DUM-DUM* because she finds she doesn't care he's having an affair and doesn't care she doesn't care. Epiphany! *BUMP* She runs over some poor woman bicycling, steals the woman's manuscript and flees.
So far it's an ok start, after she takes a crowbar and hammer to her hubby's car to hide the accident marks and hubby leaves her it's time for her to go off the edge and stalk the husband of the woman she killed. Now he's a good character, I think the book just about him would have been more fulfilling but nope, weirdo has to stalk him and drive him insane by anonymous 'good deeds.'
Basically after the first 50 pages the book is a glory for depression, stalking, mental instability, and dementia. Included are a story written by the dead woman that seems to parallel the main character's past, letters Arthur (husband of dead lady)writes to his wife Ruth (dead lady), and the main character's past in flashbacks.
All in all a book I only finished because I got tired of seeing it on my to read pile and I hate to not finish a book. HATE IT! This novel in my opinion was depressing, not in a way that makes you think deep thoughts either. It was disturbing that this book won an award for such disjointed storytelling and a premise of destroying someone, that wasn't even well executed,(in my opinion, of course),in an attempt to atone for a misdeed.
In this book we start with a woman in her husband's car spilling groceries, then when attempting clean up finds an empty condom wrapper in his car. *DUM-DUM* After this our character finds herself in some sort of fugue state, wait for it *DUM-DUM* because she finds she doesn't care he's having an affair and doesn't care she doesn't care. Epiphany! *BUMP* She runs over some poor woman bicycling, steals the woman's manuscript and flees.
So far it's an ok start, after she takes a crowbar and hammer to her hubby's car to hide the accident marks and hubby leaves her it's time for her to go off the edge and stalk the husband of the woman she killed. Now he's a good character, I think the book just about him would have been more fulfilling but nope, weirdo has to stalk him and drive him insane by anonymous 'good deeds.'
Basically after the first 50 pages the book is a glory for depression, stalking, mental instability, and dementia. Included are a story written by the dead woman that seems to parallel the main character's past, letters Arthur (husband of dead lady)writes to his wife Ruth (dead lady), and the main character's past in flashbacks.
All in all a book I only finished because I got tired of seeing it on my to read pile and I hate to not finish a book. HATE IT! This novel in my opinion was depressing, not in a way that makes you think deep thoughts either. It was disturbing that this book won an award for such disjointed storytelling and a premise of destroying someone, that wasn't even well executed,(in my opinion, of course),in an attempt to atone for a misdeed.
October 31, 2009
Even though I found the premise of this book totally unbelievable (basically a woman sneaks into the home of a man whose wife she has killed in a hit and run accident and stays--half-hidden--to help him through his grief), the story was oddly compelling. Through the interweaving of first person narrative from the "killer," letters from the husband to his dead wife, and chapters from an unfinished novel written by the dead wife you come to know each of the three main characters. It also makes you think about a lot of things, like how well do we really know those we are close to, how do we help others who may not want help, and when does well-intentioned helping cross the line into hurtful intrusion.
January 18, 2019
finished this one the morning of the 18th of january 2019 a thursday good read three stars i liked it liked the narration a combination first person...do they call it epistolary? letters? and another, the fabled story within the story perhaps intentionally autobiographical? or something. not a fast moving story so if that's your game hunt elsewhere. curious to see the destination, curious too, the unaddressed...what? one person believes wants to believe the first person eye is the accidentally killed wife? how'd that work? old guy. i guess that's it first from joss for me kindle library loaner. cold morning, single digits. brrrrrr. good time to be reading.
May 15, 2016
This book was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. I'm not sure why it qualifies as a mystery though. I never read any Joss before, and it seems that some of her other books are more traditional mystery stories. A whodunit with an investigating detective sort of thing. In The Following Day, there is a crime at the start, but no mystery about it and no investigation that we ever see. The narrator commits a hit and run accident, leaving the scene after striking a woman on her bicycle and killing her. She was distracted and upset after discovering an open condom wrapper in the glove compartment of her husband's car that she was borrowing for the day, proof of his having at least a dalliance if not an affair. She drives home and batters his car further after it is parked in the garage, leaving the condom wrapper on its busted up hood. When he comes home and sees the damage and understands the reason, he immediately packs his bags and leaves (apparently with his lover picking him up).
She stays in her home after this, becomes nocturnal and eventually goes to the house of the woman's surviving spouse, observing him through the windows. He is also staying awake nights, and is going through all of his and his wife's possessions finding things to remind him of the good times they had early in their relationship. Eventually she enters his house and cleans up the messes that he leaves behind. He writes letters to his deceased wife, at the suggestion of a grief counselor. His letters constitute a second major part of the book, but he does not really get deeply involved in that project until the narrator starts to enter his house during the night and he hears her moving about downstairs. He then believes that his wife has returned, and his letters get more expansive and expressive when he starts leaving them out for her to read.
The book alternates between the narration by the unnamed hit and run driver, the letters and chapters of a novel that the dead woman was writing.
I greatly enjoyed this book. The writing is quite good and the characters are fully realized. We feel and understand the narrator's guilt for her actions and reasons for wanting to assist the widower, who is not physically well and unable to take proper care of himself and his house, for that reason, and due to depression, and also just from his lack of experience in housekeeping, which was his wife's domain.
This is an excellent character study. It has stayed with me, in my thoughts, since I finished reading it a few days ago, which doesn't often happen.
She stays in her home after this, becomes nocturnal and eventually goes to the house of the woman's surviving spouse, observing him through the windows. He is also staying awake nights, and is going through all of his and his wife's possessions finding things to remind him of the good times they had early in their relationship. Eventually she enters his house and cleans up the messes that he leaves behind. He writes letters to his deceased wife, at the suggestion of a grief counselor. His letters constitute a second major part of the book, but he does not really get deeply involved in that project until the narrator starts to enter his house during the night and he hears her moving about downstairs. He then believes that his wife has returned, and his letters get more expansive and expressive when he starts leaving them out for her to read.
The book alternates between the narration by the unnamed hit and run driver, the letters and chapters of a novel that the dead woman was writing.
I greatly enjoyed this book. The writing is quite good and the characters are fully realized. We feel and understand the narrator's guilt for her actions and reasons for wanting to assist the widower, who is not physically well and unable to take proper care of himself and his house, for that reason, and due to depression, and also just from his lack of experience in housekeeping, which was his wife's domain.
This is an excellent character study. It has stayed with me, in my thoughts, since I finished reading it a few days ago, which doesn't often happen.
May 15, 2008
This is a confusing and depressing book. Two of the narrators move from traumatized to unbalanced to depressed to demented over the course of the story. The additional "voice" is an unfinished novel by a third character, and it's just as grim.
It has a self-consciously "literary" structure, with the chapters alternating among three voices/genres: first person narrative, letter, and novel. I suspect that I was supposed to regard the unfinished novel as good, but it seemed awfully cliched and disjunct to me. (The "book within the book" is such a challenge... I had the same problem with Francine Prose's "The Blue Angel.")
I didn't understand why the novel incorporated motifs from the 1st-person narrator's past life (blindness, incest/molestation), since the novelist and the 1st-person speaker had never met ... Maybe it was supposed to be an uncanny connection/resonance between them, but it didn't really work for me, and it didn't have anything to do with the other, much more important connection between them.
I think I was supposed to feel deep pathos and compassion in response to all three of these characters, but the only one who got to me was the widowed husband... but I don't know, I almost felt that the bare facts of his story were so grim that it distracted me from the highly stylized, "literary" presentation.
It has a self-consciously "literary" structure, with the chapters alternating among three voices/genres: first person narrative, letter, and novel. I suspect that I was supposed to regard the unfinished novel as good, but it seemed awfully cliched and disjunct to me. (The "book within the book" is such a challenge... I had the same problem with Francine Prose's "The Blue Angel.")
I didn't understand why the novel incorporated motifs from the 1st-person narrator's past life (blindness, incest/molestation), since the novelist and the 1st-person speaker had never met ... Maybe it was supposed to be an uncanny connection/resonance between them, but it didn't really work for me, and it didn't have anything to do with the other, much more important connection between them.
I think I was supposed to feel deep pathos and compassion in response to all three of these characters, but the only one who got to me was the widowed husband... but I don't know, I almost felt that the bare facts of his story were so grim that it distracted me from the highly stylized, "literary" presentation.
July 23, 2008
Well, I finally finished this book, thank goodness. What a disappointment. I have read a couple of Joss's books and really liked them because I like the "descent into madness" type of psychological fiction. But this was really not very good. It was not believable, and the main characters were just not sympathetic. It wasn't until I was about 2/3 of the way through that I even got interested in finding out how it was all going to end, and then it ended in a totally unsatisfying way. Perhaps I should be more sympathetic - perhaps this is a book intended to explain and arouse sympathy for the harmless, sad, homeless person you see on the street. Either I am too hard-hearted, or this just didn't evoke the intended reaction. I would really love to hear from someone else who has read it to know if it's just me.....
January 30, 2018
What sequence of events occur before loosing ones mind? Read the book: figuring out your husband is having an affair, driving the car in this state of mind, accidentally killing an innocent woman, trying to help her grieving husband from a distance,...it's enough to make anyone crazy, right?
"I caught a train, where to isn't important. It was only a matter of hours before I understood that a person out of place is sentenced to be out of place everywhere, yet she has no choice but to keep going. And that is how it is." -Protagonist (p. 350)
Each chapter consists of 3 parts: the protagonists' mind and thoughts, the letters from Arthur to Ruth, and the story Ruth was working on...
"I caught a train, where to isn't important. It was only a matter of hours before I understood that a person out of place is sentenced to be out of place everywhere, yet she has no choice but to keep going. And that is how it is." -Protagonist (p. 350)
Each chapter consists of 3 parts: the protagonists' mind and thoughts, the letters from Arthur to Ruth, and the story Ruth was working on...
July 8, 2011
Started out ok then grabbed my interest. I was actually more interested in the story within a story. It got a little too weird toward the end. Plus, I didn't really get how Ruth came to write the story about the hit and run driver's life. What did I miss?
July 2, 2020
This was another disappointment. Having loved Half Broken Things, I then read Puccini's Ghost, but didn't care for it. I liked this one even less. There is a difference between sad and depressing. I can enjoy a good sad book, but not one that is this depressing.
I'm unsure about trying another by Joss. How likely is there to be another Half Broken Things? To be decided another day.
I'm unsure about trying another by Joss. How likely is there to be another Half Broken Things? To be decided another day.
November 19, 2017
(Audible; Anna Bentinck, et al., narrators) Creepy, demented, depressing. The novel-within-a-novel story set in the Thirties depicts a closed and lower-middle-class English life, where everyone copes. Everyone in this dreadful 'whydunit' is completely mad, and boring to boot. A complete waste of time.
November 17, 2020
Okay book. The most interesting part was the novel within the novel that Ruth was writing. I found all the characters very sad and searching for answers to their life situations. The neighbors, nurses and writing group broke up the depressing book as the were colorful characters.
November 29, 2024
started this book at home, moved, and finished at thanksgiving. this book didn’t capture my attention at all but the premise is interesting and is well written. i liked the book within the book but not the actual book. it was too verbose was easy to put down
June 20, 2018
I liked it, but it was very sad.
July 2, 2018
I did not enjoy reading this book. It was strange and unpredictable. Waiting for some turn to add
suspense. Pretty unusual and, I found, boring.
suspense. Pretty unusual and, I found, boring.
May 20, 2022
A little strange, but I liked it!
September 1, 2022
Bizarre story and a bit creepy
May 18, 2013
This is a difficult book both to classify and to recommend;it is by turns, creepy,lyrical,confusing,over-written, blackly humorous, amazingly beautiful, mysterious,suspenseful, and over-flowing with heartache.Morag Joss must know a thousand ways to describe the reflections and qualities of sunlight and darkness, and a hundred thousand ways to articulate the fabric of grief and pain that death and betrayal weave. The story itself (a wife discovers her husband's adultery in a startlingly innocuous way while she is driving his car, procedes to come unglued,hits and kills an older woman on a bicycle and flees the scene in shock;she then becomes obsessed with the elderly widowed husband and essentially invades his life with bizarre but kindly intentions)takes many turns and is really 3 (or more) stories in one, like a tangle of alley ways off the main street. We follow the jilted wife's meltdown and learn how her disconnection from reality is a product of her painfully dysfunctional family. The widowers' failing health and debilitating grief are chronicled in letters he's been encouraged by an annoying grief counselor to write to the deceased beloved. Bridging these two perspectives are strands of a story, written by the murdered wife,a former teacher, for her "writer's group," about a simple girl's pathetic marriage to an oaf ,spanning three decades.Who is the girl in the story and what do her trials have to do with the two "real" characters? Fortunately, there are some dead-on send ups of the philandering husband, the widower's inquisitive and ham-handededly well-intentioned neighbors("nosey parkers"), and the ineptitude of the National Health service that bring some needed humor.There is also a tenderness and unexpected compassion for the broken that infuses the novel with something close to redemption. I am not sure what it all "means" but I damn sure won't stop thinking about it.
February 26, 2009
The unnamed driver of a car is using her husbands' car while hers is being repaired. She finds a condom in the glove compartment. She is distracted due to finding about her hudband's infidelity and momentarily blinded by the sun and hits a bicyclist, killing the woman on the bike. The bicyclist, Ruth Mitchell has been killed and the car's driver is unable to face the consequences of her action and leaves the scene.
A bit later her husband tells her that the marriage isn't working out and leaves her to move in with his lover.
Now the unnamed driver becomes somewhat unhinged and begins spying on Ruth Mitchell's husband. Initially it is to see how the man is doing in his grief but he consumes her.
This psychological drama was too drawn out and I found myself skipping pages to get to the action.
The chapters are segmented by Ruth's husband, Arthur Mitchell's criptic letters to his deceased wife. Someone told him that this would be good therapy but the reader isn't interested in these letters when they are so mundane as asking her where the pressure cooker is or bemoaning his inability with the microwave. (Get a life).
In addition, Arthur finds one of his wife's old stories in the attic and the reader is presented with pages and pages of this story which was set in 1932 and detracks from the flow of the story.
The unnamed driver becomes obsesses with Arthur and worms her way into his life, so much so that Arthur believes that she is Ruth, come back to be with him.
This was bizzare and unbelievable.
I would only recommend this book to the very patient reader who believes in ghosts.
Additionally, it was nominated for an Edgar Award for the best mystery of 2008 and how the judges nominated this book and failed to nominate Michael Koryta for his "Envy the Night" is a mystery by itself.
A bit later her husband tells her that the marriage isn't working out and leaves her to move in with his lover.
Now the unnamed driver becomes somewhat unhinged and begins spying on Ruth Mitchell's husband. Initially it is to see how the man is doing in his grief but he consumes her.
This psychological drama was too drawn out and I found myself skipping pages to get to the action.
The chapters are segmented by Ruth's husband, Arthur Mitchell's criptic letters to his deceased wife. Someone told him that this would be good therapy but the reader isn't interested in these letters when they are so mundane as asking her where the pressure cooker is or bemoaning his inability with the microwave. (Get a life).
In addition, Arthur finds one of his wife's old stories in the attic and the reader is presented with pages and pages of this story which was set in 1932 and detracks from the flow of the story.
The unnamed driver becomes obsesses with Arthur and worms her way into his life, so much so that Arthur believes that she is Ruth, come back to be with him.
This was bizzare and unbelievable.
I would only recommend this book to the very patient reader who believes in ghosts.
Additionally, it was nominated for an Edgar Award for the best mystery of 2008 and how the judges nominated this book and failed to nominate Michael Koryta for his "Envy the Night" is a mystery by itself.
May 30, 2009
I would have given this a solid four stars, but the final third of the book proved disappointing.
This is a new author to me; I selected the book from the New Reads shelf at my local purely on the author's name- Morag is one of my favorites (long story. Turns out she's best-known for her crime/thriller genre novels. The Night Following doesn't fit easily into this category- it's a psychological drama; there is a crime central to the plot, and another that's woven into a story-within-the-story, but the stories are not of the detective novel variety.
What earned my appreciation and rapid devouring of the book was the believable, empathetic portrayal of a woman unraveling under profound depression and the heartbreaking behaviors that result from guilt and grief. It's very reminiscent of William Trevor-characters wobbling on the edge of sanity, seeking each other out for validation. It is original, clever, and the secondary story is at least as engrossing as the primary.
But alas. It's a personal taste thing, I suppose. I have little patience for the bizarre and creepy that lacks a sense of humor (I loved Drood because you never lost the sense that the writer carried a wry little smile on his face as he pounded away at the keyboard). This novel slipped into a morass of moribundity and I wasn't keen to follow. It's not that I needed a happy ending- I actually rather liked the final bits, as dark as they were- I think I was hoping for some redemption and enlightenment. Or at least an acknowledgment that Prozac in small doses may provide some relief.
This is a new author to me; I selected the book from the New Reads shelf at my local purely on the author's name- Morag is one of my favorites (long story. Turns out she's best-known for her crime/thriller genre novels. The Night Following doesn't fit easily into this category- it's a psychological drama; there is a crime central to the plot, and another that's woven into a story-within-the-story, but the stories are not of the detective novel variety.
What earned my appreciation and rapid devouring of the book was the believable, empathetic portrayal of a woman unraveling under profound depression and the heartbreaking behaviors that result from guilt and grief. It's very reminiscent of William Trevor-characters wobbling on the edge of sanity, seeking each other out for validation. It is original, clever, and the secondary story is at least as engrossing as the primary.
But alas. It's a personal taste thing, I suppose. I have little patience for the bizarre and creepy that lacks a sense of humor (I loved Drood because you never lost the sense that the writer carried a wry little smile on his face as he pounded away at the keyboard). This novel slipped into a morass of moribundity and I wasn't keen to follow. It's not that I needed a happy ending- I actually rather liked the final bits, as dark as they were- I think I was hoping for some redemption and enlightenment. Or at least an acknowledgment that Prozac in small doses may provide some relief.
May 5, 2015
I have to go 2 stars rather than 1, because as much and as often as I wanted to abandon this book, invoking the "life's too short" rule, I just had to stay on to see where the heck Joss was going with it. No question it will go down as one of the strangest books I have read. I suppose it would be categorized as a psychological something or other. My biggest aggravation with it was the constant and endless rumination on the part of the central character who is going off the rails after accidentally hitting with her car and killing an elderly woman on a bike. For a while she is aimless, but eventually she latches onto the idea of spying on the elderly widowed husband of the woman she has killed. He is also coming unhinged, from grief, age, and disease. She starts sneaking into his house, cleaning up after him, cooking meals for him, etc, but in such a way that he does not see her. In his grief and loosening grip on reality, he is all too ready to believe that his dead wife has come back to comfort him. Perhaps it's not totally inconceivable that such a thing could happen, but it seems pretty preposterous to me.
October 18, 2015
I'm so confused with how this book was supposed to flow. It started off being very poetic, almost in Patrick Bateman prose, and then it went into hit and run mystery. Then it took a turn into stalker-ville and made you think,wait is the narrator a ghost herself? Then I was confused as to how the husband didn't know/ physically see that the narrator was not his wife. Then it just ended up being disgusting with something I won't give away, then back to stalker-ville. So, was the author trying to say that the narrator was this stalker kind of person all along and that the accident wasn't an accident? Was the narrator a hunter of lives that she wanted to protect? But that in itself doesn't make any sense because she took all this time and energy to "look after" the husband and when *Spoiler* he dies she just leaves him in the woods. She left his body there and left a note. That,to me, doesn't go along with how profoundly she cared about looking after him. If she cared and wanted to make ammends for killing his wife she wouldn't have just left him there like that like she did to his wife. SO CONFUSING!
February 15, 2017
It got a bit flowery at the end but nothing was wrapped up tidy and neat.
July 22, 2011
This book was so boring. It was like written in three different stories that all overlapped each other, but not. Really it was two people's point of views with one of the person's wives who dies stories thrown in for good measure. I got most of the plot out of reading the summary on the flap which is a good thing because otherwise I probably wouldn't have known what was going on. A women kills another women in a hit and run accident and she feels so guilty that she interjects herself into the dead women's husbands life. The three angles are the killer women's, whose writing was the most boring, the widowed husbands angles which was a series of letters to the dead wife and the third had nothing to do with the story at all, but was the writing of the dead women, a story she was working on before she died. And actually that was the most interesting of all and it didn't even finish! I think that is why I didn't like this book at all. And it was kind of hard to keep switching angles. I am not really a fan of that too much. Especially in this book.
Grade: D-
Grade: D-
March 10, 2014
I liked how the stories weaved together and it was rewarding to see the story played out like you anticipated. The author dropped lots of bread crumbs to prepare you for what would happen next. It should be shocking but I think most of us have become desensitized through the media we are regularly exposed to. It doesn't mean I don't feel pity and rage for the characters.
I cannot judge the protagonist because I don't know if I'll ever be in her place. I hope I'll never have to find out. Immediately after reading this book, I had to question myself, "What did I just read?!" Stylistically, it is written very well and smart. But the content is... not something I would want to dwell upon. So I liked it but not enough to recommend it to friends.
I cannot judge the protagonist because I don't know if I'll ever be in her place. I hope I'll never have to find out. Immediately after reading this book, I had to question myself, "What did I just read?!" Stylistically, it is written very well and smart. But the content is... not something I would want to dwell upon. So I liked it but not enough to recommend it to friends.
June 11, 2010
This book begins well - it starts with a wife who discovers her husband has been having an affair and then on the way home hits someone with her car. This first part reads like a psychological thriller and the style draws you in and makes you want to read more. However, after that the style changes- prose becomes much more wordy (lots of lengthy descriptions and metaphors) to the extent that I found myself skimming over irrelevant sections. It is also mixed with another story which is written by one of the characters. Both left me with a kind of 'so what?' feeling at the end. This book was a big disappointment after a very promising start.
September 4, 2016
The format of the book is complex, with the narration, Arthur's letters to Ruth, and Ruth's novel intertwined. I found myself looking forward to each section, but particularly to glimpses of Arthur, who even in his grief is a delight. His actions are odd but understandable; on the other hand, it's hard to believe the doctor's wife, who seems to have no friends to notice her absence or increasingly strange behavior and appearance. The book is thoroughly depressing, but the characters stuck with me for quite a while, even some of the minor but amusingly drawn visitors to Arthur's house, and I'm still trying to decide if the ending is happy or sad.
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