There is a temptation to label this book a “cosy mystery”, given it is about small-town murder. But this study of tightly-coiled female energy between three women, a mother and two sisters from a dysfunctional Old South family, disqualifies it from being genre fiction because their relationship is the motivation for all to come in a feat of literary design. These characters are so finely hewn that they feel like intimate friends. Camille, our narrator, the older sister who broke town for a journalistic career in the city, returns to cover a murder story in the hometown she despises. She’s so close the reader can step into her skin.
The story is driven by the three’s reactions to the serial killer’s movements in that hometown, a pig-slaughtering Missouri backwater that still holds a gala for the heroes of the South each year. This backdrop entwines with Camille’s habits as a sex addict, dry drunk, and “cutter”, having carved words into her body with sharp objects. These problems get worse as she learns that her mother’s dangerous parenting that killed her dead sister years back is continuing with Ama, her 13-year-old half-sister. Her mother has Munchausen’s By Proxy, seeking attention by making her child sick. Ama is tucked into bed and fed potions: starved of true motherly attention, she is happily going along with it.
Ama has a double life for a coping mechanism, on one hand doing recreational Oxy with her slutty friends at boozy parties, and another where she wears pretty frocks and ribbons and plays with an incredibly expensive dollhouse, a perfect replica of their own claustrophobic family house, that she obsesses over. The family clings to their horrible existence, and Camille clings to her addictions. Until the very last scenes, the deeper damage that this terrible mother has wreaked on her remaining two daughters is not tangible. The ways that women hurt each other are subtle yet powerful, caught here in raw formats.
The title for the book brings all the remaining threads together at the wholly shocking end. There is a cleverness to the arc that lays out each strand throughout and scoops every single one up and ties them together without it feeling tricksy. This is a meta-genre book: three literary female characters walk into a cosy mystery/horror and must see it out to the very end. The writing is poetic; nature calls to the women. There’s a sense that something lurks in the woods, an otherworldly connection to each female. Camille has no agency, blown along to her terrible discoveries. There is no happy ending. A deeply affecting portrayal of female family mechanics. But you will never eat pork again.
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