Some books you finish and don’t think about again while some stay with you forever.
But I’ll be Gone in the Dark is a book in which I think I will remain for a long time to come. I have never read a true crime book before. Even though I love murder mysteries, psych thrillers or crime novels of all sorts, I have always stayed away from any true crime literature. I am not sure about the reason but it has always felt somehow wrong to read about the worst experience of someone’s life as a story meant to entertain.
But I read this book, mostly out of curiosity when they caught the man allegedly responsible for the crimes Ms. McNamara has chronicled in the book. And I am so glad I did read it.
For one thing, it made me realize the vast difference between the fictional mysteries that I read versus a real life mystery. Fiction is all about the perpetrator, whodunit, that is the primary concern. The victims become secondary, forgotten characters only there to prop up the story of the criminal.
This book though brings across very strongly the many, many lives a single criminal act impacts. It does not sensationalize the pain and suffering or the over 50 rapes and the 12 murders. It merely states the facts but not coldly with a list of names, numbers and places. Rather it talks about the lives that were interrupted, the futures that ceased to exist and the people who changed irrevocably.
I felt the fear those people felt even though I live in a whole different country and over 20 years after the crimes were committed. I triple checked that all the doors and windows were locked on the day I began to read this book. I can still see each and every person mentioned in the book.
In fiction, there is always the consolation that this isn’t real, that the disturbing, terrifying, horrifying things being described are just the fertile imagination of the writer. But here there was no such consolation. As a reader, I found it difficult to not detach myself by letting my brain forget that what I am reading happened to someone. Letting myself slide into a mode where I saw everyone in the book as characters in a story and not real people. I got a mini shock and recoiled every time I shook myself out of the “this is fiction” mode.
If ever anyone, anywhere required proof that reality is stranger, scarier and more terrifying than fiction, it is here.
Bookish Experiences 