See What I Have Done

Despite this being the story of the famous Borden ax murders, at it's heart it's really the story of a terribly dysfunctional family. Sarah Schmidt's novel paints a fabulously unsettling picture of the Borden family - a family ruled by a tyrannical, miserly patriarch, an addled stepmother, codependent and unstable sisters, and poor Bridget the maid, who sees everything but is powerless to intervene or escape.

Lizzie is an unreliable narrator (as is to be expected, I suppose) and the narration in the chapters told from her perspective is dizzying in it's erratic and piecemeal presentation. Her thoughts jump around, concentrating heavily on sensation - what she felt, saw, heard, tasted - and she focuses on seemingly unimportant details (these details would prove to be important later, of course). I am delighted, however, to see that the other characters in the story are very well fleshed out and were what grounded the novel when Lizzie's narration took a fantastical turn. Schmidt's ability to write the characters in such a believable fashion serves to highlight just how unbalanced Lizzie was.

The gruesome nature of the crimes lends itself to a few death scenes in the novel which are handled in an understated but deeply unsettling way. The reactions of each person to the bodies are entirely in line with their characters. For those with squeamish stomachs, I advise avoiding food while reading. Also perhaps food after reading as well considering how food is also handled in the book (the MUTTON STEW! ).

This book is dark, haunting, unsettling, but also beautiful in it's style. Schmidt's expert combination of historical accuracy and creepy storytelling makes for a superb and fresh retelling of a well-known American murder.

(Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic Press for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.)

This and other reviews can be found at www.wearebooked.blog.

I loved this creepy, atmospheric book from page one. The story about the circumstances surrounding the death of Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother was told in such a compelling way that I didn't want to stop reading. Schmidt is a master of descriptive writing. Highly recommend for lovers of literary fiction.

I'm a bit torn with this book - on one hand I did enjoy the writing and the bulk of story with multiple POVs, but I did feel that it slowed down at the end which made it drag.

The writing is very atmospheric and visceral, making you feel what the characters were feeling and tasting and smelling. This alone made the book quite different, as I don't think I've read a story with quite such evocative writing.

My issues with the book are more about the plot - the story is based on the true crime of the Borden murders but as this is a fictionalised story there could have been so much more done with it! The few basic facts were there (and repeated!) but the story could have been expanded on to make this an excellent book. Another issue was the POV of Benjamin, who seemed to only be in the story to be able to fill in the later pages with the trial. He seemed so completely out of place that I just switched off at that point, after that chapter my attention was lost.

I liked the inclusion of the timeline at the end but would have thought there would be a note on the historical events and how she researched them. Maybe that's just me though.