This novel kind of fell apart for me after the midway point. I was enjoying it during the first part but once all the reveals have occurred, there isn’t quite enough substance there to hold it together. Post reveal, there is just more space to think about it all, making the character choices more frustrating and revealing the weakness of some of the premises.
The novel is set up as a memoir – Cate Kay is the author of the one of the most famous and successful recent dystopian trilogies but no one knows who she is, hidden behind a pseudonym and iron clad NDAs. Still, she is ready to share her story as she explains in the foreword. She also takes the approach to ask others who played key roles in her life to include chapters from their perspective. It makes for a fun construct as the novel includes multiple points of view in a fake memoir but also shows just how unnecessary Cate Kay’s memoir is without others to fill it out. Also, based on what we find out later, I am not sure in what world one of the included perspectives would have ever agreed to include their point of view. But in the beginning, it definitely feels like it will be a complex exploration of one person and the dynamics of relationships between women.
Cate Kay explains that she has gone through three lives or names – there is the person she grew up as, Anne Marie or Annie, the identity she took on after circumstances, Cass Ford, and finally her author’s pen name. Her novels seem to be the equivalent of something like The Hunger Games, and people have been clamoring to know more about her. But … here’s the thing, as the novel goes on and its flaws show, the more you realize that the premise doesn’t make sense. Is anyone begging for a Suzanne Collins memoir? Or, does anyone really care that much to read a memoir by Elena Ferrante if we want to talk purely about authors hiding behind pen names? (I know there is some chatter currently about Elite Silver and that author’s identity but there is a huge difference between wanting to know who an author really is and wanting a memoir from them.)
As we get the reveals and twists and find out just what made Annie become Cass, it shows that the novel relies quite a bit on characters making bad decisions and miscommunication tropes. This novel couldn’t have been set even 5 years later than it was since it relied so much on characters not doing a basic internet search, and it is a stretch even for 2000-2013 (the one time Cass does google something, she adds so damn many keywords to her search that she only gets one result that tells her nothing). The other reason people’s decisions can be somewhat explained is trauma and avoidance but even with that, it extends to too many parts.
It really started out as a potentially emotional complex novel that became superficial by the end and didn’t earn the emotional pay off or resolutions at the end.
SPOILER – the biggest weakness in this novel is Sidney and how the novel reduces her to this manipulative mastermind, thus removing agency and responsibility from others? Her lies only work because Cass doesn’t verify or want to deal with her past, but even after she cuts ties with her, she leaves an incredibly ridiculous amount of power with Sidney and just takes her word for everything. I also don’t in any world believe that Sidney would just let years of fan mail accumulate in one spot and wouldn’t have been regularly checking it or sorting through it as part of her control. I don’t like Sidney, but setting her up as it did created this weird situation where Cate/Annie/Cass is trying to simultaneously write herself as the victim and the villain of the story. I don’t even know. Cass does so many frustrating things but “she was being manipulated and/or was traumatized” but also, she was choosing to put her head in the sand. And I’m really not sure if this is a message about the complexity of toxic relationships or simply the only way Fagan could think of to make her novel work.
