After She Wrote Him

Sulari Gentill, author of the 1930s Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, jumps to the post-modern in Crossing the Lines.
A successful writer, Madeleine, creates a character, Edward, and begins to imagine his life. He, too, is an author. Edward is in love with a woman, Willow, who's married to a man Edward loathes, and who loathes him, but he and Willow stay close friends. She's an artist. As Madeleine develops the plot, Edward attends a gallery show where a scummy critic is flung down a flight of fire stairs...murdered. Madeleine, still stressed from her miscarriages and grieving her inability to have a child, grows more and more enamored of Edward, spending more and more time with him and the progress of the investigation and less with her physician husband, Hugh, who in turn may be developing secrets of his own.
As Madeline engages more with Edward, he begins to engage back. A crisis comes when Madeleine chooses the killer in Edward's story and Hugh begins to question her immersion in her novel. Yet Crossing the Lines is not about collecting clues and solving crimes. Rather it's about the process of creation, a gradual undermining of the authority of the author as the act of writing spirals away and merges with the story being told, a self-referring narrative crossing over boundaries leaving in question who to trust, and who and what is true.

As a writer, as soon as I read the premise, I knew I was going to have to read this.

It also helped that I’d already seen good things about it, but that summary? Phew. I immediately loved the idea, because it’s one of those really meta things that makes you stop and think about life. Especially as a writer. Let’s be honest, the thought that any of my characters might be real is terrifying … and not because of what I’ve put them through. That’s actually the least of my concerns.

After She Wrote Him is a masterful cross between contemporary and murder mystery, focused on the interaction between author and character that delivers on its ambitious premise.

I was a little hesitant going in, not sure how the premise would work out, but you know what? I was pleasantly surprised. The execution was beautiful and easy to follow. This was easily a five-star book for me up until about 98%, when it quickly plummeted to the three stars it now sits at. It’s a shame, but an unsatisfactory ending can ruin an otherwise perfect book, and the ending didn’t seem to actually wrap anything up for me.

❧ This prose could’ve easily been a mess, but instead, Gentill weaves a narrative that masterfully blends two stories together, easily slipping from one to the other.

There’s no clear delineation between the stories. The prose starts in one, and you suddenly find yourself smack dab in the other. As ambitious as this sounds, it worked. Really well, actually. The two stories are so intricately entwined that it felt natural to just switch between them.

The crossovers are fluid and natural as the two writers are learning about their “characters,” which made the story all the more interesting because of the duality.

Even to the point where certain characters appear in both, chalked up to, of course, the writer’s stroke of genius and adding little tidbits of their personal life. It’s a dynamic that I found really interesting and enjoyed.

❧ There’s a little bit of everything in this book: literary, contemporary, murder mystery, romance.

It doesn’t neatly fall into any of the genres, but has a little tidbit of all of them. I think this is the first book I’ve read like it. What I would say is if you like contemporary/literary, you’ll probably fair better with this book. While it has elements of the others, they kind of took a backseat.

I actually wished there had been a little more romance, which feels odd to say because I’m usually not a huge fan of romance. I appreciated the slow burn here. That’s pretty much the theme for the whole book, even the crime parts. Everything is taken slowly, which really gives the reader time to savor and think on each section of it. Not so slow that it loses interest, but not so fast that you can’t properly enjoy the journey.

❧ As a writer, I feel like there’s so much more to get out of this narrative, because there’s an underlying commentary of what exactly it means to be an author.

Right down to the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t understand. They think we’re just slobbish recluses that spurn the real world for a fantasy and … okay, well, that might be fair a little bit. But that’s no reason to get mad at a person, is it? What happened to “to each their own”?

As a writer, have you ever felt so connected to your character that they feel real, even if just in your head? Even if you know they’re not?

Good. You’re like the rest of us. I’d say you were sane, but … eh, that may or may not be the case. That’s basically the entire premise of this book, though, and it’s something I’ve heard about time and time again from writers. Only, this book takes it farther, which is what makes it interesting. The writerly struggle at its core, though, speaks to the heart of a writer, and I definitely found myself empathizing with both authors at different points of the story.

❧ I found myself easily getting caught up in the two characters’ stories and eager to find out where and how they meet.

By all rights, I’d consider this a slower story in that not much actually feels like it’s happening until later in the story, when everything culminates. The real joy of the story, though, comes from meeting the characters and growing invested in their stories and the way the line between them blurs. I found that the main characters in this, at least, are pretty easy to love.

❧ The book kind of just … ends. With nothing ever wrapped up or dealt with.

This was so freaking frustrating, for several reasons. One, I was so invested in this story that I naturally wanted to know how it ended. Except it didn’t. The open ending implies that you’re supposed to draw your own conclusions, but that’s not why I picked up the book, dang it. I wanted the answers the book seemed to promise, and I got none of them.

Second, though, the way both Madeleine and Edward’s arcs end is entirely predictable. Maybe you don’t go into it hoping for some major twists, in which case this probably won’t bother you. From probably about a quarter of the way into the book, I called what was going to happen, and I was mostly spot on, so there really weren’t any big twists or turns. This wasn’t a huge problem for me, since I was enjoying the book in general and wanted to know how it ended, but when it’s taken with the fact that the ending left me unsatisfied, it was a double bummer.

What would you do if you fell in love with a character you were writing?