Around three quarters into the book, I started to wonder when we will get to the climax. There was going to be a climax, that I was sure of. So I kept waiting. And Reading. I thought I knew exactly what the climax was going to be, but I didn't know how it was going to play out (more on this reference later in this review), so I was starting to get impatient. And then, when there was about 20 pages or so left in the book, something happened! And it was NOT the climax I was expecting...
It was BETTER!
Or so I thought. At this point, I could picture myself running straight to my computer (or the GoodReads app on my phone) after finishing the book, which I knew was going to be just a few more minutes now, and giving this book a 5-star rating. And so I continued to read... and a minute or two later, when there was only a few more pages left, I realized the climax had already come and gone. There was not much else left. And it just... crashed. My hopes and excitement for the "ultimate climax" that I knew was soo coming, was for nought. And the 5-star rating started trickling down and settled somewhere around 2 or 2.5. Talk about anti-climax. This was it.
Well, I gave myself enough time to sort of readjust my thoughts and now I understand it was still a pretty decent book, especially for a debut novel. It just didn't end the way I was so sure it would. Given the way Kea Wilson set things up from the beginning, the ending simply felt a bit... disjointed? I felt as though the author deliberately made us expect something and then deliberately played things out differently. Which is good and the surprise was refreshing, but the "climax" simply did not live up to the build-up of the narrative.
And now, as for the story, it's about a guy making a very realistic horror movie with some amateur actors in the Amazon. The description of the Amazon itself was very intriguing, and quite savage. It portrayed the formidability of this place quite well.
The narrative switches among different characters in this book. The most interesting was Richard's character -- our lead, both in the book and in the movie. He is an acting school drop-out, unsuccessful, naive, innocent, desperate, and by the choice of the director, left in darkness throughout the making of the movie,regarding the subject matter. Heck, he wasn't even given a script! Because there was no script. The director was running impov, and he expected the same from his actors. In the process, we, the readers are also kept in darkness, but Kea Wilson, very strategically, gave us clues as to what we will be seeing.
Or we thought we would be seeing. Smart. Very smart indeed. (Only, we did not.)
Anyhow, the thing that stood out to me was this: one of the characters in the book, Hank (not a very significant character), is having a chat with the director, Ugo, about his movies. During their conversation, Hank says to Ugo, and I am paraphrasing -- People love horror movies because they know what to expect. They know there will be a climax. However, they do not know how it would play out. -- Sounds familiar? I liked how the story of We Eat our Own follows this pattern, or at least tries to, to create a situation from the beginning where the readers are expecting a climax, but they simply do not know how it would play out.
In this case, I think the climax was more of an anti-climax, unfortunately.
Other than the ending however, I really thought it was a novel well written with Ms. Wilson's unique prose and narrative. She knows how to create tension in the story, so much so that at times it was hard to keep on reading, and at the same time, it was impossible to not keep on reading.
Lovers of mystery/thriller would like this book. As for me, I did not dislike it, but I sincerely wish the ending played out better than it did. I am not saying it should have ended the way i was expecting it, but even with a different ending, I think it could have been better.
Title: We Eat Our Own
Author: Kea Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, September 6, 2016.
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages.
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Crime
Source: University of Denver Library