"The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle"

[fiefoe]

This is a doozie of a mystery novel, ('matters are made worse when Aiden realizes he isn’t the only one carried so long here and there on a stream and washed now to this strange shore: two other people are also ensnarled inside this time loop, and a knife-wielding Footman is out for their blood.') and re-reading it should be very rewarding. Unfortunately, I ran out of brain capacity to track and care for these characters, as the author through 'they' ultimately treat them as props. The redemption in the end didn't engage me emotionally much. Still, Stuart Turton deserve kudos for not sparing his readers any brain cells.

• One by one, I knit these new memories together until I've got five minutes of past to wrap myself in. It's enough to stanch the panic, at least for now.
• "I imagine it would be rather splendid to wander away from myself for a little while, I envy you."
• "Well what else would you call a second chance? You don't like the man you were, very well, be somebody else."
• "The future isn't a warning my friend, it's a promise, and it won't be broken by us. That's the nature of the trap we're caught in."
• None of my previous hosts would have thought to blackmail Cunningham, let alone had the stomach to act on the threat. In fact, looking back at Sebastian Bell, Roger Collins, Donald Davies and now Ravencourt, I can see little in their behaviour to suggest a common hand at work. Could it be that I’m bending to their will, rather than the other way around? If so, I must be wary. It’s one thing to be caged in these people, quite another to abandon oneself entirely to their desires.
• Until now, I hadn’t realised how much hope I’d invested in the encyclopaedia, or in the idea of meeting my future hosts face to face. It wasn’t only their knowledge I craved, but the chance to study them, as one might one’s own twisted reflections in a hall of mirrors. Surely in such observation, I’d find some repeated quality, a fragment of my true self carried through into each man, unsullied by the personalities of their hosts? Without that opportunity, I’m not certain how to identify the edges of myself, the dividing lines between my personality and that of my host. For all I know, the only difference between myself and the footman is the mind I’m sharing.
• ‘And you think stripping me of my disguise will reveal it?’ he scoffs. ‘A face is a mask of another sort, you know that better than most; though you’re right, I am hiding something. If it makes you feel better, I’m not hiding it from you. Should you somehow succeed and tear this mask free, I’d simply be replaced, and your task would remain. I’ll let you decide if that’s worth the trouble. '
• Most of the guests are only halfway out of their beds and they reek of the prior evening, sweat and cigar smoke baked into their skin, spirits curled around every breath. They’re talking quietly and moving slowly, porcelain people riddled with cracks.
• I shake my head, trying to free myself of this man’s regrets. The memories of Bell, Ravencourt and Derby were objects in a fog, but the clutter of this current life is scattered around me. I cannot help but trip over it.
• Dance’s reticence in this matter is paralysing. As a man who despises interruption, he is equally wary of disturbing others, and the personal nature of the questions I must ask is only compounding the problem. I’m mired in my host’s manners. Two days ago, this wouldn’t have been an obstacle, but every host is stronger than the last, and fighting Dance is like trying to walk into a gale.
• ‘She’s Bell’s friend,’ Anna counters. ‘She humiliated Ravencourt and she nearly killed Derby. Far as I’ve seen, there’s more warmth in a long winter than in that woman.’
• ‘Are you saying I have to become somebody else to escape?’
  ‘I’m saying every man is in a cage of his own making,’ he says. ‘The Aiden Bishop who first entered Blackheath’ – he sighs, as if the memory troubles him – ‘the things he wanted and his way of getting them were… unyielding. That man could never have escaped Blackheath. This Aiden Bishop before me is different. I think you’re closer than you’ve ever been, but I’ve thought that before and been fooled. The truth is you’ve yet to be tested, but that’s coming, and if you’ve changed, truly changed, then who knows, there may be hope for you.’
• I believed I could bully him as I did the stablemaster and Dickie, but Stanwin’s nervousness wasn’t a symptom of fear, it was the unease of a man finding a lone question in his pile of answers.
• ‘We are never more ourselves than when we think people aren’t watching, don’t you realise that? It doesn’t matter if Stanwin’s alive tomorrow, you murdered him today. You murdered a man in cold blood, and that will blot your soul for the rest of your life. I don’t know why we’re here, Daniel, or why this is happening to us, but we should be proving that it’s an injustice, not making ourselves worthy of it.’
  ‘You’re misguided,’ he says, contempt creeping into his voice. ‘We can no more mistreat these people than we could their shadow cast upon the wall. I don’t understand what you’re asking of me.’
• I dig through my memories, searching for the pieces of the future I’ve glimpsed, but not yet lived. I still need to know what the ‘all of them’ message Cunningham delivers to Derby means, and why he tells him he’s gathered some people together. I don’t know why Evelyn takes the silver pistol from Derby when she already has the black revolver from her mother’s room, or why he ends up guarding a rock while she takes her own life.
  It’s frustrating. I can see the breadcrumbs laid out ahead of me, but, for all I know, they’re leading me towards a cliff edge.
  Unfortunately, there’s no other path to follow.
• He’s sitting on a chair, a hand stuck inside his left boot, which he’s brushing with a soldier’s vigour. I shiver a little, rocked by a powerful sense of the uncanny. The last time I saw this man, he was dead on a forest floor and I was going through his pockets. Blackheath’s picked him up and dusted him off, winding his key so he can do it all again. If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.
• Shifting my weight, I realise I haven’t eaten or taken a drink all day, which isn’t ideal preparation for the evening ahead. I’m light-headed and without anything to distract me I can feel every one of my hosts pressed up against the inside of my skull. Their memories crowd the edges of my mind, the weight of them almost too much to bear. I want everything they want. I feel their aches and am made timid by their fears. I’m no longer a man, I’m a chorus.
• I watch them go, catching sight of myself in the glass, my hands stuffed into my pockets, Rashton’s quietly competent face suggesting nothing but certainty.
  Even my reflection is lying to me.
  Certainty was the first thing Blackheath took from me.
• The stars are cowards, closing their eyes as we creep closer to the graveyard, and by the time Daniel pushes open the gate, our only light’s the flickering glow of his storm lantern.
• ‘I’m confident it will,’ she snorts. ‘Tell me truthfully, will you let her leave?’
  The question knocks him silent a moment, a slight tilt of his head conveying his indecision. My eyes slip towards Daniel, who’s watching them, his face rapt. I imagine he feels as I do, like a child watching his parents argue, understanding only half of the things being said.
• ‘You’re trying to rescue me?’ she says incredulously, the glass shard dangling by her side, forgotten.
  ‘Something like that.’
  ‘But you murdered me.’
  ‘I never said I was very good at it.’
  Perhaps it’s my tone, or the way I’m slouching on the step, but Anna lets the glass shard drop to the floor, and sits beside me. I can feel the warmth of her, the solidity. She’s the only real thing in a world of echoes.


• Too little information and you're blind, too much and you're blinded.
• So many memories and secrets, so many burdens. Every life has such weight. I don’t know how anybody carries even one.
• Anger’s solid, it has weight. You can beat your fists against it. Pity’s a fog to become lost within.
• I'm any face in a crowd; just the Lord's way of filling in the gaps.
• The Plague Doctor claimed Blackheath was meant to rehabilitate us, but bars can’t build better men and misery can only break what goodness remains. This place pinches out the hope in people, and without that hope, what use is love or compassion or kindness?
• Chairs and chaise longues have been gathered around the fire, young women draped over them like wilted orchids, smoking cigarettes and clinging to their drinks.
• “Oh, don’t mind me,” she says. “I loathe getting to know people, so whenever I meet somebody I like, I just assume a friendship immediately. It saves a great deal of time in the long run.”