“Notes on an Execution” by Danya Kukafka

I found this book through one of those Buzzfeed articles that so often convinces me to waste time. The article in question was a compilation of the best first lines of books (see here, if you're curious), which means it was an article more worthy of reading than is typical for Buzzfeed, although most of the lines mentioned were either from books I'd already read, or they did not grab me. This one… well, tbh the lines quoted seemed more inscrutable than amazing, but they did pique my curiosity, and I recognized the author's name from when I read and enjoyed her previous book, Girl in Snow. So I gave this new one a go.

And it was definitely a good choice! This is the story of Ansel Packer, abandoned by his parents at the age of 4 and raised in the foster system, who at age 17 goes through a brief stage of killing girls before settling down to a more acceptable existence with his future wife. The story leaps nimbly from death row to Ansel’s childhood and everything in between, told mostly from the perspective of Ansel’s mother and wife, plus the detective working the case of the murdered girls. While at times the story was unsettling, it was always very compelling.

Despite my enjoyment of the reading experience, I do have one complaint about the book. While I am aware that conventional wisdom disparages the use of adverbs in writing, surely this doesn’t mean we need to eschew them entirely? The first few times an adjective was conspicuously used where tradition indicated an adverb, it seemed quirky and experimental (in a good way), but the more often it happened, the more annoying and pretentious it seemed. Like, if it had only been done two or three times, it would have seemed like a positive, even impressive, thing. Or maybe if it was only used in relation to a single one of the narrators? But by the time I noticed it was happening every ten pages or so (fingers twitching nervous, dangling graceless, averted uncomfortable, the air tinged lavish…) the lack of ly was sticking out like a sore thumb and was definitely rubbing me the wrong way. 

But that’s the worst thing (in fact, probably the only bad thing!) I have to say about this book.