Ward, though, doesn’t seem to think it’s a competition. Audiences have grown jaded from years of surprises both earned and forced (ahem, Star Wars), so it’s not terribly surprising that authors are trying to up the ante. I suppose it’s not enough anymore for a book to have a twist. Please come back and talk about it when you have, there are so, so many wonderful things to say. The Last House on Needless Street is great. To the uninitiated, this is the sum total of my review: I will be discussing some of Catriona Ward’s themes and insights, but mostly for those who have already read it. It is a multilayered, profoundly thoughtful, and wonderfully suspenseful book, one that any review cannot truly do proper justice. However, I would caution anyone who hasn’t read the book to be very careful about spoiling yourself on this one. What follows is a spoiler-heavy, even spoiler-gleeful review. It is impossible to write a meaningful analysis of The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (Viper, 2021) without spoilers, and so I’m not going to try. The Last House on Needless Street is a book that has twists not for their own sake, but because what we think of as twists–unexpected events nonetheless grounded in established character and plot–are a natural extension of the characters and events Ward is tackling.
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