I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

I Let You Go is a crime novel, which begins with a traffic accident in which a five year old boy gets hit by a car. Ray and Kate are police officers in charge of the case, but they aren't able to find any leads to get them closer to resolving it. Jenna leaves town to disappear in a remote seaside village, however her past eventually catches up.

In the first part of the book the chapters alternate between Jenna's and Ray's point of view. The story seemed a bit slow. Jenna is getting used to her new life, Ray and Kate investigate the case without any progress unless their boss tells them to drop it and take on another case and solve it to benefit the police statistics. The story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, until the last pages of the first part when a massive twist happens. It seemed to me that the author took advantage of the fact that I blindly trusted an unreliable narrator. It served me right. In the second part of the book the third narrator was introduced: Jenna's husband who tells us more about her past. At this point the pace picks up.

The main motive of a crime novel is finding the culprit and explaining what happened. However it also got me thinking about independence, family dynamics, domestic violence and what it can do to a person. Clare Mackintosh spent twelve years working as a policewoman and she must have seen various forms of violence as well as its consequences. It happens to real people, not just in books and films, and for me this was the really scary part of the novel. It made me feel angry and sad. However, I think I would do without so many graphic descriptions of violence. I had a slight issue with it and perhaps it is due to the fact that I didn't really read the book but listened to it on Audible. It was read by Nicola Barber and Steven Crossley and they did the job wonderfully. For me listening to the book made it even more real. Especially when the violent scenes are written in the second person, like "I did this to you" and so on.

All in all I think the construction of the novel is very good as well as all the twists, most of which I didn't expect. I loved how Clare Mackintosh created an unreliable narrator, which she then used to wake the reader up and plunge them into a dynamic story. As far as violence goes, I still haven't made up my mind. Would the story be equally powerful with less violent scenes?

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I Let You Go je kriminalka, ki se začne s prometno nesrečo, v kateri življenje izgubi petletni fant. Ray in Kate sta policista, ki preiskujeta prometno nesrečo, preiskava pa kot kaže ne pelje nikamor. Jenna zapusti mesto in v zabačeni obmorski vasici skuša sestaviti življenje, vendar jo preteklost kljub vsemu dohiti.

V prvem delu knjige se poglavja iz Jenninega zornega kota izmenjujejo s tistimi z Rayevega. Od začetka mi ni bilo čisto jasno kam gre zgodba, kaj se sploh še namerava zgoditi. Jenna se privaja na novo življenje, Ray in Kate rešujeta primer, ki ne prinaša rezultatov, dokler jima šefica je zabiča naj se ukvarjata s čim drugim, kar bo boljše za policijsko statistiko. Na koncu prvega dela se, zame nepričakovano, zgodba postavi na glavo. Pravzaprav je videti, kot da je avtorica izkoristila dejstvo, da sem se uspavala in ne razmišljam več. Prav mi bodi, ko pa slepo zaupan nezanesljivemu pripovedovalcu. V drugem delu spoznamo še tretjega pripovedovalca, Jenninega moža, od katerega izvemo več o njeni preteklosti. 

Z izjemo prvega dela, ki je mi je morda rahlo vlekel, je zgodba dinamična. Poanta kriminalke je po navadi ta, da se reši zločin ini najde krivca, vendar ob branju te knjige lahko razmišljamo tudi o temah kot so neodvisnost, družinska dinamika in družinsko nasilje, ki za seboj potegne strah in prevzemanje tuje krivde nase, v želji da bi se vse skupaj končalo. Clare Mackintosh je bila dvanajst let zaposlena v policiji in verjamem, da je videla nasilje in njegove posledice od blizu. Vse to se dogaja resničnim ljudem, ne samo v knjigah in ravno to je zame strašljivi del zgodbe. Kljub temu (ali pa ravno zato) se mi zdi, da bi šlo tudi brez eksplicitnih opisov družinskega nasilja ali pa bi jih lahko bilo manj. Morda je svoje dodalo tudi to, da knjige v resnici nisem brala, ampak sem poslušala avdio verzijo, pripovedovalci pa so svoje delo zelo dobro opravili. Tako se mi je zdela zgodba še bolj resnična. Poleg tega so prizori nasilja napisani v drugi osebi, kot na primer "naredil sem ti to in to".

Konstrukcija zgodbe se mi je zdela zelo dobra, dam ji velik plus za presenetljive obrate. Všeč mi je bilo kako je avtorica ustvarila nezanesljivega pripovedovalca, ki ga je potem spretno izrabila zato, da bralca potegne za nos. Kar zadeva nasilje, pa se še nisem odločila ali bi se dalo isto, z enakim čustvenim nabojem povedati drugače.