Bloomsbury
Review by Brian Tanguay
I have never read a novel in which the protagonist searches for someone to take their life. Meet Agnes Maurer, follow her over the course of twenty-four hours, enjoy her wit and style, her extensive knowledge of high-end consumer brands and culture. Agnes will tell you about Wolf ovens and Sylvia Plath without missing a beat. She attended Yale and became a model, like her mother, but failed to become an actress, like her father, a source of disappointment and insecurity, but not the sole reason Agnes is working through a list of people who might do her the favor of killing her.
Agnes has thought her plan through. “The person to kill me must not be sentimental or precious. Must be unconcerned, but exceptional.” Setting the terms of this ride early, Hallie Elizabeth Newton maintains the momentum. Her prose is taut and brisk. Obviously, something is amiss with Agnes, but what is the root cause? On a material level she seems to have everything one could want: she lives with a famous writer in New York City, her parents are accomplished and well-off artists, and she knows the right people. She has a therapist, Dr. Meineke, resources for Botox injections, and is often told that she’s pretty. But none of this is enough.
Perhaps the root cause is a combination of performative social media and the ultimate emptiness of consumer culture. Agnes says she likes to pretend, and that pretending gives her power, but as she slides further into dissolution her cultivated facade becomes impossible to maintain. After swapping drugs for a gun, she has the means to end her life but Agnes won’t kill herself, someone else must do it. Is suicide too shameful? Is being murdered a more fitting and dramatic end? Despite Botox treatments and the rigor of her SoulCycle workouts, Agnes recognizes that her body is changing, the inevitable wilting process is well along. Is the cruel advance of time Agnes’ problem, the loss of beauty and sex appeal?
Late in the novel Agnes provides a hint of what is bothering her:
“The end of my talent. It isn’t perceptibly visible to men yet. But it is to women, and that’s the first sign of the end. They’ll kill me first. In the wild they kill the matriarch when they sense her failure. When they can’t have babies anymore. When they can’t keep up with the herd.”
Perhaps what Agnes is confronting is the pressure the culture places on women to have it all: beauty and brains (though not enough to intimidate potential partners), sexual prowess, style, wit, charm. Even with numerous advantages, it’s hard to be the “everything” woman. Over the course of a manic day, Agnes becomes a soul adrift in the New York night, a fugitive with a gun and a piece of ammonite in her bag.
