Book Review: The Appeal
Apr. 23rd, 2024 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAfter both littlerhymes and skygiants posted reviews of Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, describing it as an epistolary murder mystery about a dysfunctional community theater group that starts raising money to buy an extremely expensive cancer treatment for the director’s granddaughter, I couldn’t resist reading it myself. This was an excellent decision, as the book is a propulsive read and I zipped through it in one day, although also perhaps a terrible one as the book also wrecked me.
Specifically, I was crushed by the plight of Issy, one of the newest members of the theater group and certainly the least popular, constantly sending long chatty emails and receiving terse one-sentence replies. Issy works as a nurse in a geriatric ward, where she’s latched like a limpet onto the new nurse Sam, who is just back in the UK after ten years in Africa with Doctors Without Borders. Let’s have lunch together every day! Can I join your daily runs? What if we tried to arrange to have all our shifts together from now on? Everyone is so much nicer to me when you’re around! Why don’t you join my theater group?
We don’t have Sam’s emails, so it’s not quite clear how she responds to this avalanche of attention, but she does accept the invitation to join the theater group – and soon realizes that there’s something fishy about this appeal…
Okay, enough about the actual plot. Back to Issy! I just felt so bad for her, because she’s so so so so isolated—no one even comes to see her at opening night! But her efforts to remedy this loneliness are so obviously fated to backfire At one point she realizes that Sam has (GASP) another hospital friend, is overcome with furious jealousy, and decides that there is only one possible course of action: she will be an even better friend to Sam! Which means that she will be even pushier!
Just. Issy. NO.
But also, of course she simply can’t do better. She’s so lonely that stepping back isn’t an option that occurs to her, and even if it did, she probably couldn’t do it. There’s a point where she emails Sam, “Please say we’ll have lunch together on Friday. If I’ve got something to look forward to, it would make me feel life is worth living,” and of course this is transparently manipulative*, but also, of course, it’s God’s own truth about how she feels. Pushy as she is, most of the time she is in fact holding back her true feelings, because she knows people are not attracted to crushing despair. Instead she tries to be helpful (I’ve noticed a general correlation between “people who want to be helpful” and “people who believe in their bones that the only way other people will put up with them is if they are useful”) and positive and peppy, but her desperation leaks through and annoys the heck out of the group.
“Please someone love Issy,” I wept. Even though we don’t have Sam’s emails, it’s fairly clear that Sam is not on the same “we are like SISTERS” wavelength as Issy. The only people who seem to genuinely like her are James, the director’s grown-up son who has stepped in as interim director while his dad deals with the appeal, and Lauren, Issy’s pre-Sam nurse friend who has now left nursing. Issy (in a real “cutting off her nose to spite her face” move) firmly snubs Lauren, presumably because she feels that Lauren abandoned her by leaving nursing.
Then it turns out that Lauren doesn’t exist! Issy has been sending herself emails from an imaginary friend this whole time. (An imaginary friend that she constantly blows off, even! She’s made up an imaginary girl whom she can treat the way that everyone else treats her.)
So there is only one person who is genuinely fond of and kind to Issy, and that is James. So of course when James commits a murder and discovers that Issy is an accidental witness, she agrees to keep her mouth shut, and indeed goes so far as to confess to the murder to try to cover it up! Only it backfires, because a death that might have been classed as a suicide now becomes an active murder investigation, and James ends up in the pen. Classic Issy.
I was simply broken on the lathe of Issy’s loneliness, but I feel that this is a somewhat idiosyncratic response, and most other people will respond to other aspects of the narrative. It’s a fun puzzle box mystery, and a cool use of the epistolary format, and just a very compelling read.
*I’m using the word manipulative here because I think a lot of people would describe it this way, but to be honest, I hate this usage. In a situation like this, accusing someone of being manipulative is an easy way to refuse to engage with their distress. They were manipulative and have thus forfeited the right to human sympathy, seems to be the thinking.
But when someone is attempting to communicate that they are in great distress, this communication is by nature “manipulative.” It demands an urgent response, now, whether the listener happens to feel like helping their suicidal coworker or not.
The difficulty (here, and in similar instances in real life) is that Issy doesn’t just want help this one time. She wants Sam to be her best friend forever. And although Sam clearly sympathizes with her plight—she responds to this sad email by coming over to Issy’s place for a visit that very day!—you just can’t become someone’s best friend on demand. You have to actually like the other person, and if you don’t, the most conscientious effort in the world to be a friend to this person who desperately needs a friend simply won’t work, because they will sense the hole at the center of the endeavor.
littlerhymes and skygiants posted reviews of Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, describing it as an epistolary murder mystery about a dysfunctional community theater group that starts raising money to buy an extremely expensive cancer treatment for the director’s granddaughter, I couldn’t resist reading it myself. This was an excellent decision, as the book is a propulsive read and I zipped through it in one day, although also perhaps a terrible one as the book also wrecked me.Specifically, I was crushed by the plight of Issy, one of the newest members of the theater group and certainly the least popular, constantly sending long chatty emails and receiving terse one-sentence replies. Issy works as a nurse in a geriatric ward, where she’s latched like a limpet onto the new nurse Sam, who is just back in the UK after ten years in Africa with Doctors Without Borders. Let’s have lunch together every day! Can I join your daily runs? What if we tried to arrange to have all our shifts together from now on? Everyone is so much nicer to me when you’re around! Why don’t you join my theater group?
We don’t have Sam’s emails, so it’s not quite clear how she responds to this avalanche of attention, but she does accept the invitation to join the theater group – and soon realizes that there’s something fishy about this appeal…
Okay, enough about the actual plot. Back to Issy! I just felt so bad for her, because she’s so so so so isolated—no one even comes to see her at opening night! But her efforts to remedy this loneliness are so obviously fated to backfire At one point she realizes that Sam has (GASP) another hospital friend, is overcome with furious jealousy, and decides that there is only one possible course of action: she will be an even better friend to Sam! Which means that she will be even pushier!
Just. Issy. NO.
But also, of course she simply can’t do better. She’s so lonely that stepping back isn’t an option that occurs to her, and even if it did, she probably couldn’t do it. There’s a point where she emails Sam, “Please say we’ll have lunch together on Friday. If I’ve got something to look forward to, it would make me feel life is worth living,” and of course this is transparently manipulative*, but also, of course, it’s God’s own truth about how she feels. Pushy as she is, most of the time she is in fact holding back her true feelings, because she knows people are not attracted to crushing despair. Instead she tries to be helpful (I’ve noticed a general correlation between “people who want to be helpful” and “people who believe in their bones that the only way other people will put up with them is if they are useful”) and positive and peppy, but her desperation leaks through and annoys the heck out of the group.
“Please someone love Issy,” I wept. Even though we don’t have Sam’s emails, it’s fairly clear that Sam is not on the same “we are like SISTERS” wavelength as Issy. The only people who seem to genuinely like her are James, the director’s grown-up son who has stepped in as interim director while his dad deals with the appeal, and Lauren, Issy’s pre-Sam nurse friend who has now left nursing. Issy (in a real “cutting off her nose to spite her face” move) firmly snubs Lauren, presumably because she feels that Lauren abandoned her by leaving nursing.
Then it turns out that Lauren doesn’t exist! Issy has been sending herself emails from an imaginary friend this whole time. (An imaginary friend that she constantly blows off, even! She’s made up an imaginary girl whom she can treat the way that everyone else treats her.)
So there is only one person who is genuinely fond of and kind to Issy, and that is James. So of course when James commits a murder and discovers that Issy is an accidental witness, she agrees to keep her mouth shut, and indeed goes so far as to confess to the murder to try to cover it up! Only it backfires, because a death that might have been classed as a suicide now becomes an active murder investigation, and James ends up in the pen. Classic Issy.
I was simply broken on the lathe of Issy’s loneliness, but I feel that this is a somewhat idiosyncratic response, and most other people will respond to other aspects of the narrative. It’s a fun puzzle box mystery, and a cool use of the epistolary format, and just a very compelling read.
*I’m using the word manipulative here because I think a lot of people would describe it this way, but to be honest, I hate this usage. In a situation like this, accusing someone of being manipulative is an easy way to refuse to engage with their distress. They were manipulative and have thus forfeited the right to human sympathy, seems to be the thinking.
But when someone is attempting to communicate that they are in great distress, this communication is by nature “manipulative.” It demands an urgent response, now, whether the listener happens to feel like helping their suicidal coworker or not.
The difficulty (here, and in similar instances in real life) is that Issy doesn’t just want help this one time. She wants Sam to be her best friend forever. And although Sam clearly sympathizes with her plight—she responds to this sad email by coming over to Issy’s place for a visit that very day!—you just can’t become someone’s best friend on demand. You have to actually like the other person, and if you don’t, the most conscientious effort in the world to be a friend to this person who desperately needs a friend simply won’t work, because they will sense the hole at the center of the endeavor.
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Date: 2024-04-23 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 02:44 pm (UTC)Poor Issy!
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Date: 2024-04-23 04:27 pm (UTC)But Issy has no one to fall back on, so she just doubles down.
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Date: 2024-04-24 12:34 am (UTC)I didn't empathize with Issy as much as you did, perhaps because I have been variations of her and Sam at different points of my life. I guess I felt Seen in a way that was not entirely comfortable, which was at odds with the otherwise romp-fest that was this book.
That said, the last couple of pages brought Issy back into vibrance in a way that left me absolutely cackling.
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Date: 2024-04-25 06:25 pm (UTC)I did love the fact that Issy's idea about how to thank the lawyers that helped her is to insert herself into their lives as an absolutely indispensable colleague. Of course it is! That is SO Issy!
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Date: 2024-04-24 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-25 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-24 10:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-25 06:37 pm (UTC)Sam is also not as pure as driven snow, of course - willing to pose as Issy to get access to Poppy's records at the other hospital, which could have had some pretty bad repercussions for Issy if anyone decided to press charges. They deserve each other?? Well, perhaps not exactly...