Book Review: (OT) Those Who Knew (literary, unsolved mystery)

Those Who Knew by Idra Novey (Viking, 2018, 248 pages, $28)

Are you an academic specializing in political upheavals of island nations in the western hemisphere? If so, you may be able to follow what goes on and you may simply love the cryptic Those Who Knew by award-winning author, poet and translator Idra Novey.

On the other hand, if you are like me and the majority of readers who read for fun and to escape, you may be lost for 248 pages. The island country is not named, neither is the port city, neither are the characters (generally), nor any language nor who is in power in the government, making it difficult to follow the suspenseful plot that seems to end only in one’s imagination. It is trying to follow the plot, such as it is.

Alternating Viewpoints

The best part of Those Who Knew is the short chapters, from a paragraph to four pages, interspersed with a few pages of a play script, enabling you to follow whose voice each chapter is written about. The woman who works in a bookstore with sometimes no sales except for the weed it also supplies to the local university students and who also writes to S. as if to a diary. Later we find out S. is alive - I think.

Then there is the woman professor who once followed, mesmerized, a would-be senator and thinks he threw another young female idolizer-student into the path of a bus one night, causing her demise. The professor is from a privileged fruit juice family in a gated community mid-country while she lives with her son 40 years later in the poorer port city.

The senator ends up marrying the daughter of someone who can accomplish just about anything with his power and money.

Then there is the young blond chef from the tourist country up north, I think.

And finally, the action - of sorts - takes place at one time, and 10 years later, and 40 years later and 2 years later.

It’s a Small World, After All

What goes around, comes around as our protagonists meet 40 years later and also run into the children and grandchildren of other protagonists and recognize them.

It’s hard to discover just who is in power – the fascists, the rebels, the government who rounded up at least one person in just about every family. And then we have the autobiographical playwright brother of the senator – or is he his cousin?

Flummoxed by the Title

This reviewer can usually surmise the reason behind the title, even if it appears only once in a book, but she has failed, here. Who is it who knew and what did they know? Is it up to us to surmise and, if we do, do we then fall in love with the story?

Hopefully one of my book clubs will select this book and someone will be able to explain things to me. . . . I did feel a bit ‘select’ by guessing at a couple of subplots and who the characters were so I suspect I might seriously love Those Who Knew if I could figure things out. I just didn’t win at this game, however.

I think I would prefer the author’s poetry! (Don't think I'll try her other novel.)