I’m not one of the many obsessed with TV series, real and fictional, on serial killers. I watch them here or there, the ones everyone is talking about, the famous cases, the ones people can’t wrap their minds around, but I could do without them. Sometimes I think I keep letting them in just to remind myself that these awful things are happening in the world, even if I am not directly affected by them.
That said, I didn’t pick up Notes on an Execution out of a hunger for more serial killer related entertainment, but because it was described as a book presenting, “…a chilling portrait of womanhood…” It sounded like the kind of book which dug deep into character development, therefore something I should read as a study for my own work.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka is told by different 3rd POV narrators, all female, save for the 2nd POV of the man on death row, and is more than just fiction. It is a study of people, loss, and the good and evil we all possess.
The story was compelling, and the prose was beautiful.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
“…pity is the most offensive of feelings. Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy. Pity strips you bare. Pity shrinks.”
“…how sad it was that a single bad thing could turn you into a story, a matter to be whispered about. Tragedy was undiscerning and totally unfair.”
“Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.”
“There is good and there is evil, and the contradiction lives in everyone. The good is simply the stuff worth remembering.”
Rating: 4/5
Leave a Reply