How’s that for a plot twist?
Ever since I relaunched this blog, I’ve tried to make it a rule to avoid bad reviews (can’t say I was bound to that edict when I was writing consistently back in 2015-2017; but those posts shall remain unlinked for the sake of my reputation). However, I’ve also tried to make it a rule to never miss a week when it comes to posting, and so, today, I find myself faced with a predicament.
In my newsletter this week, I mentioned that I was planning to purchase The Fury, Alex Michaelides’ latest book. Here’s where I feel I can allow myself a bit of grace in the “bad reviews” department: as a rule, I love Michaelides’ work. The Silent Patient was one of my wildest 2022 reads, and I flew through The Maidens in a single sitting. In both cases, I enjoyed not just the plot, laden with shock twists to the very end, but also the way in which Michaelides’ writing subverts the genre. Typically, his prose is tight and his references are intellectual - if you’re familiar with Shakespeare and have a good grasp on Greek mythology, you’ll love his regular references to both, and if you don’t, you’ll learn from reading his books. It was with this attitude that I eagerly awaited The Fury, his latest thriller, which was released on January 16th.
On the 16th, I eagerly popped into Rizzoli on my way home from work to purchase it. No dice. When I got off at my subway stop, I headed into Shakespeare & Co. to test my luck there. No luck, either. I did see The Silent Patient heavily featured as one of their bestsellers, which confused me a bit; if they were aware of Michaelides’ popularity (and any bookseller is, it debuted at #1 on the NYT bestseller list and has sold a staggering 6.5 million copies to date), why wouldn’t they have pre-ordered his latest? Could it have something to do with the quality? Unwilling to trek to any additional independent bookstores in the inclement weather, I ordered it for next-day delivery on Amazon. My fears were assuaged when it arrived with a pull quote from Lucy Foley (another one of my faves when it comes to a page-turning thriller), who declared it her “favorite Michaelides yet.” A good sign! But I needed to see for myself.
The Fury takes place between London and a private Greek island. A gorgeous retired starlet in her forties named Lana (I was picturing Gwyneth) is desperate to escape London’s gloomy spring weather, and invites a few friends to her island for Easter, alongside her second husband and son.
We know from the start that someone dies on the island. Our narrator, Elliot Chase, was present when it happened, and he winds back the clock to not only take us through what happened that night, but also a string of incidents throughout the preceding years that provide context into why each character might have motive to commit the murder.
In fact, at a certain point, Chase refers to the story as a “whydunnit” and not a “whodunnit.” After watching and loving A Nearly Normal Family, this excited me. It was, like many of the promises our narrator makes throughout the book, a bit of an empty one. And it’s our narrator himself that sits at the center of my struggle to get through this book. I think this was maybe the point - Michaelides wanted to create an unreliable narrator, à la Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. The issue is, Elliot Chase isn’t so much unreliable as he is…insufferable. The entire book is addressed to “you,” the reader, which makes for a clunky ride the whole way through, a stark contrast to the tight and elegant prose I’ve been accustomed to from Michaelides. At a certain point, Chase suggests that, by now, “you” might at least consider him a bit charming. I was genuinely shocked by this assertion - though, without spoiling anything, perhaps it was inserted to belie his total lack of self-awareness - but it’s hardly a spoiler to state that, given I found him repellent and delusional from the very first page.
Michaelides’ plots are always somewhat wild, but there were rarely points during his other books that I found myself feeling they were entirely nonsensical. It’s hard to write about a thriller without spoiling, but the “plot twist” felt like a cheap and easy way out from creating a more compelling twist.
To Michaelides credit, the mythology references remained, and I did find myself reading quickly (although I must admit, that was partially motivated by a need to write and publish this review). Beyond that, The Fury had me feeling…I wouldn’t say furious, but satisfied is certainly not the word either. I still have faith in Michaelides’ ability - he’s an incredibly strong writer, arguably the strongest in the genre (that I’ve read) - but I can only hope the next book he puts out aligns more closely with his first two than this.
And so, we find ourselves faced with a subpar thriller from the master himself. How’s that for a plot twist?