With books such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train having breathed new
enthusiasm into the thriller market, Jo Mazelis’ equally infectious novel Significance is hopefully in a good position to benefit from this buoyant end
of the bookshelf. And in many ways I’d say that Jo’s book is far
superior to the other two.
With her background in
poetry and short stories, Jo has produced what is easily the most
literate of the three thrillers I’ve mentioned. With imaginative metaphors,
picturesque turns of phrase and a joyful use of vocabulary, Significance is a
much more indulgent read than either Gone Girl or The Girl On The Train – both
of which, while having captivating plots, are much more light weight books.
Although that’s not to
suggest that Jo’s style is overbearing or alienating – I found Significance
just as attention grabbing and sailed through the whole book in three days.
Including standing at the stove some evenings, stirring pots with one hand and
holding her book in the other hand, unable to tear myself away from the plot.
And the plot of
Significance is cleverly slight considering the depth of detail and wealth of
characters. All of whom play integral parts in a sad event of seemingly no
significance. And that’s the beauty of the book.
Our protagonist Lucy
vanishes from her London life and reinvents herself in a small French town hoping
to escape her boring old life and start again. But a simple bad decision on an
otherwise unremarkable evening out soon puts a stop to that. And the rest of
the book sees the many characters she has interacted with, however briefly,
becoming woven into her story and implicated in her disappearance, cascading
into a catastrophic effect.
Jo’s skill at bringing
all of these seemingly tiny elements together and tying up every loose end is
astonishing, and while reading the book I was going cross-eyed trying to
imagine how an author would even begin to map out such a novel. To achieve a
multi-character thriller that swaps from narrator to narrator yet remains true
to every nuance is extremely impressive – well, it certainly is to my mind!
I’m sure it’s annoying
for Jo to have her book compared to those like Gone Girl and The Girl On The
Train, and it’s maybe lazy of me to make such a comparison. But I do it as
someone who doesn’t often read thrillers but read the first two to see what the
fuss was all about, and was drawn to Jo’s after it was suggested to me by
someone who works at her publisher, Seren. Having now read Significance, I can
only agree with him that her book deserves a wider audience of the kind the
first two have achieved. So if you enjoyed either or both of those, please do
pick up Significance as I know you will love it as much as I did.
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