The October List / Jeffery Deaver

The October List by Jeffery Deaver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel begins with a Soren Kierkegaard quote: “ Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

That sets the reader up for this thriller written in reverse. If you are interested in the methods used by writers or by the structure of fiction, this is the book for you. It is fascinating! As promised, it starts with Chapter 36 and works its way back to Chapter 1.

I can't imagine how Deaver went about writing this. Did he start at the beginning and the reverse his chapters? Or did he write it in reverse too? One thing I am positive about: he must have used a strong outline! There's just no way you could write this without one. (I just read the Foreword at the end of the book, and sure enough, he planned it with post-its).

It was surprisingly difficult for me as a reader to keep track of the action and the characters in this novel. We are so used to following plot lines from oldest event to newest, it is extremely disorienting to adjust to events flowing in the other direction! And my other feeling is that this would be a boring book if written in the conventional way. The plot would be too straightforward and the characters would be too few and too stereotypical to hold most readers' attention. (And you would know too much).

You would think that if you started with the ending, there would be no surprises, wouldn't you? And yet, from Chapter 4 through Chapter 1 there were “Holy shit!” moments in each chapter. Suddenly, I saw previous events (or is that later events?) in a completely different light.

That said, please remember my usual caveat with this genre: I am not an enthusiastic consumer of thrillers. I am not the target audience and I know it. If you love them, this may be a much better reading experience for you. I admit to choosing it for the title as one of my October books. A frivolous reason which led me to a book with a most interesting structure. Still, that structure and the element of surprise that it provides makes this a firm 4 star read for me!


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