The Shape of the Night
(Contains spoilers)
I bought this book from a bookstore because I was searching for a good thriller, and saw that this one had some good reviews on it on their website. Good reviews meaning 4 or 5 stars out of 5. Publishers Weekly also stated, on the back cover of the book that this story is one of Gerritsen’s best ones. When I later searched more information about this book, to my surprise, this has overall really good reviews. I originally thought that The Shape of the Night would be a good add to my (currently small) thriller book “collection” but I found myself not impressed by it at all.
The Shape of the Night is a thriller, mystery and psychological fiction book, published in 2019. The author of the book, Tess Gerritsen, is a trained doctor and started writing books as entertainment in her maternity leave. Her first novel was published in 1987 and since that she has been international bestseller. (Otava, 2019).
The story is narrated by Ava Collette, who moves from Boston to a little village in Maine for the summer in hopes of continuing her cookbook. Because of a renovation, centuries old mansion, Brodie’s Watch, is in Ava’s price range to rent over the couple of months that she plans on being there. Ava thinks that she has made a great find for herself but is immediately set back by the feeling she gets from the house at the very beginning. She feels like she’s not invited to the house. Nevertheless, she moves in and begins to experience unexplained events and constantly feels that she’s being watched. The house was built by Captain Brodie in 1800’s, who later died at sea. When Ava studies more of the house’s history, she finds out that only women have lived in it and each one of them have eventually died there. The house is also associated at least to one unexplained death from some decades ago so the story also raises a question of a possible killer on the loose.
I knew that this book would contain some paranormal elements but I expected (and hoped) for more meaningful explanation for them than just a haunted house and a spirit that had been trapped there — and apparently for no reason. Captain Brodie didn’t have, for instance, any unfinished business among the living. I would’ve loved the explanation to why Ava experiences these things to be associated with some sort of a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, and because of that sense smells and see hallucinations that are not real. You could also easily question the reliability of Ava’s character because of the amount of alcohol she consumes. Obviously the past traumas have affected her mental health and in order to maintain it, she turns into substances. I just think that the theory that Ava imagined all of the things seems a bit far-fetched. Why was Hannibal constantly acting weird in some rooms? How did Simon also experience paranormal events when he stayed at the house? How did Ava end up in the tower after the alleged sexual encounter with Brodie? What was the black “smoke” that Maeve’s cameras captured? Why was Maeve overall so freaked out by the house? How did Ben fell from the tower if Brodie didn’t help Ava?
The story had weird sexual, BDSM-ish, emphasis that didn’t really provide anything to the plot. It all could be explained by the shame and quilt that Ava felt after having an affair with her sister’s husband. And what brings even more burden on Ava’s shoulders is that Nick was so determined to get home after it that he drove under the influence, crashed his car and died later in the hospital. The sexual encounters with Brodie were just there because Ava wanted to punish herself. Some (if not all) of the encounters had really rapey undertone which is a strange feeling to have about someone who isn’t even alive. They still made me feel really uncomfortable. Couldn’t Ava think of any other way to ease her quilt? Maybe go see a therapist? Or tell Lucy the truth and try to work things out like normal people? I think it was really unfair to Lucy that Ava decided to not talk about the things, that happened at the night of Nick’s death. You would assume that a book that was so centered around the quilt of the affair would also want to deal with the aftermath.
I think that for some the elements of sexuality and the shame and lust that are associated with it, the paranormal experiences, and criminal events, are interesting enough. Don’t get me wrong, I read the book fairly quickly and didn’t consider it to be boring at all. It was just the predictable and obvious plot twists. It kind of made me angry that I had to wait for the confirmation to something I had already figured out many pages ago. That happened, for example, with the affair between Ava and Nick, and with Charlotte’s corpse that was found in the water. I still want to read some of Tess Gerritsen’s other books but The Shape of the Night gets a no from me.
1½/5
References:
Otava (2019). Tess Gerritsen. https://otava.fi/kirjailijat/tess-gerritsen/
