The Disassembly of Doreen Durand

Great book, written beautifully! Highly recommend!!

The prose was observant and compelling, and the plot was strange and millennial."...saying anything with a degree of sincerity threatened to lead to true existential trauma and lunch was only thirty minutes."There's a bit of every genre here, but not in a way that feels like a hustle. The best way I can give you a feel for this book is to say it's like one of those butters that sounds funky when you describe the eclectic ingredients to a friend, but is delicious and odd when you eat it. It's a weird butter."The brown of her irises peeled away to reveal only black."I enjoyed it, even as I'm left feeling a little like Doreen by the end - unsure of of what's been experienced - but knowing it was one. An experience. There are scenes that remain indelible, and there's a part of me who wants to keep poking at them, smoothing the crumpled parts flat until I can feel the watermark and get an answer. Am I Solloway, the policeman, in this review? I think perhaps I am. Perhaps that's the whole of it. There is no unreliable narrator, only the unreliable reader bent on finding an answer where there is only what happened."Stability was only a series of latches that needed tightening, locking, and leaving."Thank you to NetGalley and Sandstone Press Ltd for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I read this over a weekend and loved it. It's a fast paced novel, that explores how a woman's unraveling accelerates after witnessing a tragedy. In her distressed state, Doreen is crushed by our normal world and its conventions, (this first section is the strongest part of the book) but help to rebuild herself comes from an unlikely source; just how unlikely is not revealed until the very end. The story is skilfully told, his prose style is very deft; there is plenty of humour as events - even the more grisley ones - race along. It reminded me of some of Margaret Atwood's non-science-fiction novels, such as "Robber Bride" or "Lady Oracle". A great read