Book Review - His Bloody Project (Man Booker Shortlist 2016)

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Heard a lot of praise for this book from colleagues and the internet alike. I like reading the odd crime novel, and couldn't resist picking this one up. The subject-matter seemed an unusual choice for the Man Booker shortlist, but this year's list has had unusual nominees.

Set in the late 1800s, the book recounts the 'true' events leading up to the triple murder of a wealthy family by a poor crofter's son, Roderick Macrae. Roderick and his family have had a tough few years. His mother died, leaving behind twin toddlers, a daughter with a connection to the 'spirit world' and a decrepit home. His father's attempt to take up a thankless higher position fails; in his stead an unlikable gent takes over. Roderick himself is a wistful young man who gets in trouble for not tending to his flock properly. Things get worse, as they tend to do, when the new boss comes in. This Lachlan Broad is heartless and ruthless and appears to have some kind of vendetta against the Macraes, but nothing can be proven.

And then the murders happen, and Roderick confesses to them and ends up in jail. Which is where the story starts. The first section of the book 'reproduces' Roderick's memoirs while he was in prison awaiting his trial. The text moves back and forth between the memoir and Roderick's interactions with his overzealous self-appointed advocate Sinclair.

We then move on to the accounts of Sinclair's psychoanalyst friend (whose name I can't remember), a man who condescends on country folk and has an unhealthy habit of sizing up everyone he sets his eyes on. He determines people's intellect by scrutinising their bodies and writes all the poor off as having deformities.

After this nonsensical critiquing, we are thrown into transcripts of the court trial, an overlong, tedious and meandering segment that, in its effort to feel realistic, makes the text and plot stagnant.

Let's just say the best part of the book was the surprisingly realistic take on what it's like to have a new boss come in and change everything, despite experienced subordinates saying otherwise. The rest of the book... well, it should have been a lot better.

[I kept expecting some surprising plot twist, some point to this story. I speculated that Roderick was covering for someone; or that someone was using him as a puppet; or that he was mistaken, and someone came in and did the deed instead. Anything but what we actually got (which most of us probably figured out anyway). It was disappointing, because, in the end, it all comes down to the same thing, a man being rejected by a woman and thereby avenging his rejection. It's appalling that the author went with such a simplistic and archaic formula.

What's more frustrating is that the only four female characters of any significance in the book are tied to their sexuality. Roderick's sister Jetta is tasked with being the new Macrae mother, and her story arc is that she gets raped by Lachlan Broad, never ever speaks about it, ends up pregnant, gets beaten up by her father when he finds out and then kills herself. The Macrae mother is a non-character, till Lachlan Broad informs Roderick that he used to do the same thing to her.

We then have Flora Broad, daughter of Lachlan, a 15-year-old girl who takes an interest in Roderick but obviously doesn't act on it because she's 15. She turns out to be the reason for the killings. Rejected by her and unable to go the distance, Roderick kills her and mutilates her body as well. Why he confesses I don't know, he could have just run, but he's an idiot. Finally, the only other woman spoken of is the one he first confesses to. She's of little importance but the author ensures that the trial transcripts harp on about her exquisite looks. It's the 21st century, yet authors can't write about a single era without making women about their desirability to men. SMH]

I keep wondering if the knowledge that this book was fictional and not a true story, as it kept pretending to be, detracted from my experience of reading it, and thereby enjoying it. Had I not unconsciously found myself looking for modern syntax in every sentence, I may have enjoyed it more. It also doesn't help that if you're writing a book of fiction, irrespective of which period it is set in, you must include a commentary on the wrongs portrayed in the story. Otherwise, what's the point of art? And when I say a commentary I don't mean a preachy epilogue on what is right, I mean sympathetic text woven into the main plot that calls the culprits and the system out for its wrongs.

This book doesn't do that; it doesn't even try. I think one of the main reasons it got as far as it did in the Booker run is because of its innovative structure and style, and the contrivance of it being a 'true story'. Once that latter bubble is burst, however, you fail to see any merit in the novel.

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