Written 24 Aug 2008.

With the will the way would be found.

Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner

I do not think a day goes by without me reading fiction. Even when I am reading some non fiction books I still read some fiction every day. Non fiction tends to last me much longer; it requires more of my mind than fiction does. Although good fiction, and some not so good, makes me think of the world around us.

Some think the reading of fiction is a kind of escape from the real world around us. I do not think so. Even if while reading the real world seems to disappear and the world created by the author feels perhaps real, after the reading the real world is still there and possibly in sharper detail or contrast than before. Certainly, this is the case with me. For me whatever I read, whenever I read, the world I live in with all its good and evil, its problems, its delights, its very real beauty, is always there. Further, often when reading some phrase in the book may stop me and bring me very forcibly to something in the life around me.

I have just finished another crime novel about solving a case involving a serial killer. Many crime novels seem to be about serial killers. I suppose they sell, so the authors create them. I suppose it also gives added urgency and suspense to the storyline to have a serial killer as one being pursued and having to be stopped before more people got killed. Another supposition of mine is that the authors, if they are any good, are trying to grapple with the nature of evil - taking of life, whether it is actual extinguishing of life or destroying the soul or spirit of a person, is the ultimate evil. And it has to be on a personal level, killing of individuals rather than the evil of war, as we have not yet developed a sense of collective local/global responsibility to feel truly horrified by the state of our society which leads us to allow some people's lives to be seen as less worthy than others, to be seen as exploitable and expendable.

I think Lisa Gardner is a good writer. Not my very favourite, but one whose novels I like reading. In pers novels (I have read a couple of them) I get a feeling of exploration of the nature of evil. Another kind of theme in the novels is the family relationship, in particular the first ever relationship we each encounter - that between a parent and a child. The book I have just finished is Say Goodbye and it deals with the evil of child exploitation. It tells a plausible story in a harrowing way about a person's journey from an innocent child to a murderer. It is a heartbreaking story and even while condemning the murderer I felt pity for per as much as I felt pity for pers victims. It deals sensitively and plausibly with the effects of such awful abuse can have on those who are rescued and returned to their families.

I feel a little ambiguous about the female accomplice of the murderer. Per is somehow made to be worse than the really horrible and calculating killer, although per does not kill anyone perself. Per enjoys the violence whereas the killer needs the feelings of satisfaction and power that the killing gives per in order to drown the feelings of fear and helplessness per was made to feel when per was abducted and abused. The woman is devoid of any kind of feeling for others whereas the murderer does right at the end feel relief at being killed and not having to destroy another child. I wonder why the author needs to invent a female character like this. It fits in the story and is central to it really. But ... is a woman more unfeeling once the feeling for others is killed in a person? Only the need to survive at any cost is left in the person? Is that what a woman can become when per chooses to act on the capacity for evil within per? And is it only possible for women to be like that? Do men have a spark of humanity right at the end, but women don't? Or is it that we women are harder on other women, more unforgiving? And why, if that is the case?

What does this book say about the world we live in? As the main detective says "The world is a hard place. People suck. Monsters do live under the bed-or, frankly, in Daddy's room down the hall." The answer to this problem at the end of the book is to install more security systems and to be ever more watchful. I like to think that more could be done to make our world safer. This same character says "... everyone has inside him- or herself the capacity for evil. Some people will never act on it, others will definitely act on it, and still others will act on it only if the right circumstances present themselves." I do believe that we all have the capacity for good and for evil also. I do, however, question the rest of this statement. In our society which does not collectively condemn the abuse of allowing some people to be seen as worth more than the others, it is not possible to determine how we all would act if the society was such that none lived in poverty and fear and none lived in obscene material wealth. We should collectively condemn the situation where a child was hungry, where a child was abused. To condemn that situation would mean doing our best to change the situation. Not just build walls around our lives in the hope that the monster could not climb over.