#35// murder murder + best of 2021

it's the time for best-of-the-year lists

Dear Reader,
Hello, my lovelies. They say January is the month of the new, the what-to-expect month. If we extrapolate it, my 2022 is going to be a year of munching Pringles and gulping down Pepsi. I have been trying to cut down my coffee intake, which went into exponentially high levels during the winter (still ongoing) but I might’ve landed on bigger, worse eating habits. My reading habits change drastically with each year of the pandemic (Sounds like Station Eleven, yes?). So I went from Ottessa Moshfegh to chunky books that never end to middle grade to cozy crimes to….now. I cannot bring myself to read simply because I love reading. No, ma’am. I need twists, passionate loves, crimes, eavesdropping strangers, peeping wives, scandals—you get the idea. I am gravitating towards entertainers these days. The world is just ‘too much’ and I want to make sure I forget everything about the real world when I pick a book.
 

Read

But talking of last year, one slow book that took me by surprise was The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey. At blurb-glance, this slow burn suspense story of a priest in a medieval hamlet listening to confessions during Lent did not sound like something I would enjoy greatly. BUT oh my!! This one’s delicious! Why didn’t it make social media waves, I know not. (Why?)
 
I read this book last summer in the park, propped against a tall tree on a really sunny day. And I felt the dark creeping in, just like this sentence in the book “Night stole in but so stealthy and inch wise, who would notice?” In my better senses, I would have walked home and finished the book in a cool and comfortable room. But I was completely in the spell that I sat there twitching, sweating, stretching my legs that had gotten too numb, and reading and reading.
 

“The air was one third water, one third spirits and one third smoke and the smoke was flavoured with chicken and pork” and "Lungs were steeping”. So was I. I could smell the tiny village of Oakham, feel the restlessness as religion, Lent and murder inflict tremors in an otherwise calm hamlet stuffed with secrets. Told over four days, and set in 15th century Oakham, Somerset, The Western Wind begins when the corpse of the most influential man in the village is found on Shrove Tuesday. The murder mystery is narrated by the village priest John Reve who is privy to many secrets among his parish folk but bound by the confidentiality of church confessions. The priest himself has a few tricks and geese up his sleeve.
 
The dean who is investigating the murder is pissed and suspects foul play. He entrusts priest Reve with the task of finding the truth—murder, suicide or accident—by, wait for it, forcing the villagers to confess! But the priest, lone shepherd, collective conscience keeper of the naive simpletons, and saviour of his sheep must decide what’s the truth, and how much. The death unnerves the village folk. Did somebody sin in the holy days of Lent? Everybody thinks they have a hand in it. Will they be forgiven or thrown in hell?
 
Superstitions and secrets throb and thrive. People come to confess and unburden their guilt, big and small—I found an egg with two yolks and ate it all for myself, I spoke with my mouth full, I burped Ave Maria to amuse my boy, We ate thirteen at a table, I pissed in the churchyard, I forgot to feed my pig, I masturbated, I slept with a lover, “I overslept; I underslept, I overslept” — “Was it me Father? Did I?”

There were portions that that made me take a step back when I revisited the book, but did not fumble over the first time I read them. Consider this—
“He was standing by my bed, shaking as if a wind were at work on him, and his breathing was caught. He must have had no light to see by, except for the night lantern that burnt by my door; no candlelight of his made a rosy umber through my eyelids.” Probably not a favourite if this was a standalone paragraph; it gives me an odd feel. But in the context of the narrative, in the flow of this slow burn murder mystery, I was completely hooked by odd, dated, wordy sentences padded in the passive, reminiscent of old books, and times gone by, quite apt for a story set in the 15th century.
 
Reading The Western Wind was a treat to the senses. There are guilt burdened whispers in the confession box but also “wedding brew and slices of beef, boar, chicken, goose; cabbage tossed with bacon, pears stewed in honey” and “breath pooled stale in the cocoon of a blanket”. Tiny pleasures, indulging in food on the sly, having a crush, eavesdropping, fervent prayers—everything comes together beautifully in this dim-lit, claustrophobic and wonderfully atmospheric novel.
 

The story is told in reverse (reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of A Death Foretold) and herein lies the brilliance—circular and jaw dropping. I immediately re-read the first few pages after I finished the book and exclaimed not-so quietly “Oh my god”.
 

Best Books of 2021

The Western Wind was one of my favourites of last year. But that’s not the only one. Here are my best books of the year. Instagram moms being stalked, serial killer obsessed with bookish murders, monsters and spirits, circus shows, and rioting nuns included!
 

Watch

A new K-drama list has dropped featuring the best of 2021. Cutest couples, serial killers and what not. Read more.
 

Amazing links

On bookish newsletters where yours truly gets a mention *joy* (Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times)
This wine rack for Pringles
The anxiety of influencers (Barrett Swanson, Harpers)
Female ghosts and spirits of Japanese folklore ranked (Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton, Electric Lit)
Imagining Nancy Drew in the age of the internet (Kristen Radtke, NYT)
   

For nail biting thrillers, translated books and swoony reads,
Sign up for TWO months of FREE Scribd using my Invite Link. 

That’s a wrap. Hope you are well and warm.
 
Until next time,
Resh x



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