NICCOLO WOULD LIKE A WORD

In Graham’s psychological thriller, an ill-advised quest for revenge reveals a long-buried secret.

Shannon has never recovered from her sister Maureen’s death decades ago. Now middle-aged, she can’t stop thinking about Grant Pritchard, the high school teacher who seduced Maureen and who, Shannon believes, ultimately caused the car crash that ended her life. And so, when she discovers that he’s leading a writing workshop in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she signs up for a class with his much-younger female colleague, comic-book artist Wylie Buckner. Shannon’s childhood best friend, Allison, has returned to Provincetown to pick up the pieces of her life after her mother’s sudden death three years earlier. Shannon stops taking her mood-stabilizing medication and begins plotting to murder Pritchard under the imagined direction of her vengeful cat, Niccolo. (“I especially love the part where you know you have your prey cornered, and you can play a little first before you go in for the kill!”). It’s up to Allison to save her best friend, so she enlists a ragtag group, including Shannon’s mother and Wylie, to uncover the dark truth of her past. Alternating between Shannon’s and Allison’s perspectives, the narrative ambitiously explores trauma, friendship, and family secrets, bolstered by a series of unexpected twists that are sure to keep readers on their toes. One of the novel’s greatest strengths is the way in which it recontextualizes events with new revelations that never feel unearned. While the characters often act in exaggerated ways that can undermine the sense of psychological realism, the relationships that form between them are compelling, particularly the dynamic that develops between Shannon and Wylie. But Niccolo’s role as the chief instigator of Shannon’s murderous plot is distracting at best and can make the story difficult to take seriously. Still, while the middle section occasionally struggles to maintain momentum, the novel ultimately delivers a satisfying examination of grief, mental illness, and the impact of buried secrets.

An uneven but moving tale of trauma and friendship.