Well here’s a book I gobbled up over a couple of nights. It’s that very unusual thing, a smart and worthwhile book that’s also a serious page turner. Here’s how it begins: ‘Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
I mean a longing for sex, yes. Money, yes. Power, definitely. But the picturesque? And yet that’s what this story is about. The plot may be summarized as: young man becomes overly involved with his classics class.
The young man in question is a freshman in college when he gains admission to a tight little clique focused on the Ancient Greeks, and over time we learn that they harbour a big secret. They have been trying to live the life of the Ancient Greeks, up to and including attempting to meet with Dionysus in the woods of Vermont, and as part of this bizarre project have unintentionally killed a farmer. One member of the group, Bunny, a somewhat unstable young man, begins to suggest he is going to tell people about the murder. The group try and placate him by pandering to all of his whims, but slowly they realise that they are going to need to find a more permanent solution. So this time it’s an intentional killing – but it doesn’t end their problems, because now they all begin to fear that the others will tell. I won’t give away what goes on after that, except to say that the book carries on to explore what it would mean if we really tried to live the life of the Ancient Greeks – sibling sex and all.
The key lesson I learned is: always commit your murders on your own.