Krishna
Jerry Grey seems to be relating a story of how he killed his victims to an ‘attractive’ woman and a police officer in the police station only to be told that the woman is his daughter. He is indeed in a police station as an officer is on the watch. He learns that he has severe Alzheimers and the narration of the crimes are stories he wrote as a true crime writer in the past. An interesting beginning. He lives in a care home and managed to escape, finally ending up rescued and now sitting in the police station.
She takes him to the rest home where he lives. She calls him Jerry and not ‘Dad’. You come to know why later.
This is a great story construction. You see two timelines in parallel. First there are journal (diary) entries he wrote to himself (to ‘Future Jerry’) where we learn his past bit by bit – this is at the onset of the disease when he wanted to write everything he knows to himself to read later, when his mind is gone. The other stream is his bumbling around confused due to an advanced state of Alzheimer’s (now) with some lucid moments.
Amazing descriptions of his progressive illness. How he started losing small things – did not remember where he kept his keys, progressing one day suddenly to momentarily forgetting his wife Sandra’s name – initially they all thought it was a joke until it happened repeatedly.
He learns from his daughter Eva that his wife is filing for divorce – still does not know why. He discovers that he is living in a care home from where he has escaped and that he has no ‘home’ per se. He discovers his daughter is marrying What’s-His-Name shortly. Captivating descriptions of bewilderment felt by a man afflicted with Alzheimers. Powerful language that provides a somewhat immersive experience. Brilliant.
He writes himself notes (‘To Future Jerry’) because he knows what lies ahead of him is darkness where he forgets everything. The notes are heart wrenching and you feel his pain and fear on what is coming down.
But it gets even more interesting when briefly you catch hints of the fact that it may not all be about how he lost his memory and is struggling with his life and the person he has become – with the aid of his own notes to himself (to ‘Future Jerry’).
There is not much to tell except very poetic descriptions of how he descends into the depths of Alzheimers, how he struggles with his declining powers of creation (he is an author, after all) and how slowly he pushes Sandra away – all of which is told in his journal to self. Juxtaposed with these are the current episodes of utter confusion about who he is or where he is, and how he behaves completely weirdly in the current world.
When he insists repeatedly on his having killed Suzan with a ‘z’, they all know of the character he wrote in a book and calm him saying ‘there is no Suzan’. He reads his own books, having no memory of having written them.
When police take him to the station, he learns that his wife Sally, who he thought was in the process of divorcing him, is now dead and what is more he, Henry, is being accused of killing her.
When he goes to retrieve his journal (yes, the ‘Future Jerry’ journal you have been reading pieces of) to prove his innocence, he meets the new owner of his old house where he lived. The new owner, Terrence aka Terry is a fan and lets him in. But Jerry (accompanied by his helpers from the care home) not only does not get the journal where he thinks it is but gets a blood stained dress shirt – they all think that this is the dress he wore when he shot his wife. He gets wild and has to be sedated to gain control, to the horror of the watching fan.
Meanwhile, we learn from the diary that Jerry increasingly wanders off, and buys cat food for a dead cat who has been dead many years, goes to hide the spray can (which his neighbour accused him of using to paint obscenities on her house and who earlier accused him of ripping out her, the neighbour’s, rosebushes.
When he is caught having instant noodles with no plate but straight from the table by Sandra, she decides to institute an alarm system and smart sensors which will alert her whenever he opens the door to go out. This increases his anger and frustration and when he goes to taste desserts for impending Eva’s wedding, he is certain that Sandra is flirting and having an affair with the guy who owns the bakery – with no proof at all.
This is nice, we watch the progress of the disease through the diary and then come to the present where he watch him increasingly confused about everything. The police also accuse him of murder of a real missing girl because ‘he confessed to her killing’. But he has confessed to killing all his fictional heroines too, so we are left hanging on what is real and what is imagined in his bizarre world of forgetfulness interspersed with brief periods of lucidity.
The language is always nice and engaging and the atmosphere is unusual – one of the few stories that are set in Christchurch, New Zealand. Nice.
There are scenes that are jumbled. For instance, Jerry wakes up in an apartment with a naked girl dead and his shirt suffused with blood. He takes the knife (the girl was stabbed) and puts a coat over his shirt and gets his friend Hans to take him away. He is already being accused of murdering the florist friend of Sandra (who is arranging Eva’s wedding flower arrangements) as well as Sandra herself and has no idea why they think that he did it. When Hans comes to take him off, Jerry is told that not only has the girl been discovered (in the time Jerry spent in the mall waiting for him) but the flower lady has also been murdered and that the police suspect Jerry.
The diary in parallel describes his growing paranoia, and his escapes from his own house to wander away constantly, causing Sandra grief. His paranoia also makes him believe that Sandra is continuously cheating on him with every man she meets – for instance the dessert shop owner supplying sweets to Eva’s wedding.
He makes a mess of Eva’s reception by giving a wild, insulting speech that pisses off everybody. That is a fantastic scene, a mess of mammoth proportions.
It gets better. Hans seems to save him every time and now he says that he has been framed by Eric the orderly in the care home. Hans really gets worried when he finds out about the Madness Journal (which you have been reading along, addressed to ‘Future Jerry’) and you realize that even killing Sandra is not something he did but simply woke up to. When Hans points out that he has many puncture wounds and theorizes that he has been drugged every time and put near a body, he gets confused. And so do you.
After the WMD (Wedding of Mass Destruction) where he gave the epochal speech and gained Internet notoriety, Sandra finds him with another bloody shirt and a knife. She gets totally crushed and in total guilt, he agrees tacitly to end his life and is preparing to kill himself, with Sandra ‘stepping away for an hour’ when she rushes back and says that her friend Mae said that Jerry spent the evening with her (drinking tea) when Belinda was killed so Jerry definitely could not have been the one.
Confusingly, Mae claimed that he left her house with no blood on his shirt but Hans, who picked him up right in front of her house, claimed, when questioned, that he did. You smell a rat.
In the present, Eric is lying unconscious in Han’s car and they try to shake him into confessing framing Jerry – trying to put him out of the window and holding him by the legs, a Hans idea – when they lose the grip and Eric falls to his death. Your suspicions start growing stronger and stronger with each page.
He discovers a diary in Eric’s house, after being surprised by his wife and drugging her – courtesy Hans who has an explanation for why he is carrying around the syringe – he reads it alone and realizes that Eric encouraged him, Jerry, to write it when the first Madness Journal got lost. In one page, he reads ‘Don’t trust Hans’ written over and over again. All tense stuff. Hans calls him and shows him what he found. More ear rings from other victims and samples of hair collected – and Hans claims that here is the proof that Eric killed all those girls and framed Jerry.
The ending is very interesting and very touching. When a book makes you not want to put it down to eat or sleep you know that the author has achieved the great feat of keeping your interest completely. This book will do that to you, especially the last fifty pages or so.
Good story, great read. 8/10
– – Krishna