The Death of Us
A Novel
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- ¥2,000
発行者による作品情報
“A page-turner par excellence, written with unobtrusive brilliance, [and] full of sharply observed lines . . . The Death of Us lives up to the hype.”
—Stephen King
“The Death of Us is astonishingly good—Abigail Dean’s the real thing.”
—Mick Herron, bestselling author of Slow Horses
“A devastating exploration of the long-term effects of violence . . . [b]y focusing on the victims rather than on, say, the drama around the police investigation, this wrenching book subverts the normal conventions of a serial killer novel. It’s an unusual and effective approach.”
—The New York Times Book Review
It’s the night we never talk about.
It’s the story the world wants to hear.
But this isn’t the story of that night. This is the story of us.
Together, Edward and Isabel move to London. They are young and in love, occupied by friends, work and fun. But late on a spring evening when they are thirty years old, their home is invaded by a serial killer. In the wake of this violation, each tries to come to terms with a night that changed everything—and their marriage begins to crumble.
Twenty-five years later, their tormentor is caught, and Edward and Isabel reunite for his sentencing. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be brought to justice. Edward has tried to think about anything else. As they prepare to deliver impact statements in the public eye, it is time to revisit their love story. Will they finally be able to confront the secrets, longings and lies that tore them apart?
Or will the horror of that night be the death of them?
A captivating portrait of a marriage and its implosion, The Death of Us digs into the stories we tell ourselves about love—and everything love can bear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A DIVORCED COUPLE reunites for the sentencing of the serial killer who shattered their lives in this moving literary thriller from bestseller Dean (Day One). Thirty years ago, the South London Invader broke into the home of playwright Isabel Nolan and her husband, lawyer George Hennessy. The couple made it out shaken but alive; their relationship, however, never recovered. Decades later, the Invader—retired policeman Nigel Wood—has been caught, tried, and convicted, and Isabel and George, now in their 50s, are preparing to deliver victim statements before his sentencing. The story mostly unspools through Isabel's testimony, in which she recounts her and George's tumultuous marriage and addresses her assailant with all the emotion she no longer dares to share with her ex-husband. Her decision to publicly out herself as a victim of the Invader helped bring the killer to justice—and helped her find her voice as a writer—despite protestations from the fiercely private George. That rich dynamic, plus a poignant subplot about the orphaned daughter of one of the Invader's victims, add texture and novelty to the narrative. As in her two previous works—Girl A, which focused on an adult survivor of parental abuse, and Day One, which depicted the aftermath of a school shooting—Dean transforms tragedy into art with surgical prose and a steely gaze. It's a triumph.
