The Murders of Molly Southbourne

It was the cover that sold me on this one, when I saw it on Netgalley.  I didn't even realize when I clicked request that it was from Tor (which is practically an automatic must-read), or even that it was a novella (which I figured out when I was 10% of the way in and shocked at how fast it was going).

Look at that cover.  The Murders of Molly Southbourne, by Tade Thompson, has the title-cover one-two punch going for it.  The starkly pale face with the bright red streak of blood. How many people has she murdered? Is she even the killer?

From the beginning, where the character wakes up chained up in a basement, unsure who she is or where, we are left guessing.  A young woman comes in and says she needs to remember this story, cuts her own arm, and begins to narrate.

The novella is about Molly, who grew up on a small farm in England with her loving parents.  She is homeschooled and lives a solitary but happy life. Her parents guard her carefully, and no harm is allowed to come to her. When she is even slightly hurt--a small cut, a nosebleed--well, strange things happen. More mollies appear, which starts out fun but very quickly becomes dangerous.

My friend Katie once passed on a comment from her writing teacher: a novel talks about the turning point in a story, but a novella talks about the lead-up to that turning point.  In a novella, the end of the book is the Big Moment Where Something Happens. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a global truth (and I think I'm going to email Katie to ask), but I've thought about that a lot, and I think it's often true--good novellas frequently build tension all the way through at a steady pace and break the tension on the very last page.  It's not about the Big Moment happening or about the aftermath, but about the lead up to the Moment itself

I wouldn't have said that while I was reading this book, but in retrospect I think that's true. If it had been any longer, it would have had to be structured completely differently; I would not have been able to tolerate the steadily mounting tension, the difficult progression of Molly's life. 

But as it was, this was perfect; it's a perfect example of a story that takes a premise and spins out the life of the person who lives that premise.  Molly is curious and hard and strange and competent, and she has a life of many, many questions but very few answers. 

A very interesting story; I'm quite looking forward to whatever comes next for Tade Thompson.