While I am at it: The reason I know ITV is still doing DVDs was “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office” (appalling!) with Toby Jones as Mr. Bates (amazing!). Totally got me. If I had followers, I’d say just two words: “Watch this!!!” About “The Cut” I’d have to say a few words more, though it also got me in the end. I’d recommend listening to it, but not before having checked your state of mental health and stomach lining.
I watched “Red Eye” right away. It’s great to watch and so short that it feels like one long film. And, if you are not feeling too good, it certainly doesn’t make you feel worse because it’s this kind of story about international incidents and secret services that doesn’t get too personal. I was practically watching it in one go because I enjoyed it. After that I had a relatively empty weekend before me and decided that I had earned a break. I listened to “The Cut” practically in one go – which took a few hours longer - not because I enjoyed it but because I couldn’t stop.
Audiobooks are great because I don’t have to stop listening when I am cooking or tidying or taking a bath, or because I am so tired that I cannot read on, though, in this case, I fall asleep at some point and have to go back on it. I kind of enjoyed “Geneva”, mostly because I liked to discover that Richard Armitage really can write. When it comes to this kind of books = the crime/thriller genre, I am not a good judge anyway because I don’t really like them. I enjoy the suspense of course like the next person, but I am more into the human stuff, and, even when there is really something new and interesting that I get invested in in the beginning, it usually gets “out of hand”, spiralling into some harebrained scheme towards the end, so that the books invariably end up “losing me”. Richard Armitage’s books are no different. They are both conventional thrillers. But even though I don’t really like it, I am constantly reading or watching this kind of stuff for all the wrong reasons. For example because I want to see certain actors perform, or am curious how Richard Armitage is doing as a writer, or because, to get to fascinating “real life” stuff about a Roman building site that actually existed, I need to work my way through a lame plot and characters that don’t feel like real people. “Geneva” and “The Cut” are certainly not like this. They are both GOOD thrillers. Initially, I enjoyed “Geneva” more because the experience was less disturbing, but – and that’s great for a SECOND novel! – “The Cut” is by far the better book.
Even where the plot is concerned, because there is this extremely dense and seamless construction of revealing the past progressively through what is happening in the present. Even though this set-up to revive the past is as lunatic and devilish as these plots usually are, it really works. Once I had started, I HAD to read on. And – extremely important for me who is not good at processing a lot of information – the story is told in a way that you always have all the information you need at a certain point and are not confused by irrelevant detail. I was never lost but in a permanent state of anticipation. Better still: the inevitable “plot twist” – not really a plot twist, though, but a slow turn-around - leads to a complete revolution of what I anticipated – in my view the hallmark of a great thriller. In this respect it might be one of the best thrillers I have ever read.
I was less happy with the characters, though: “top-dog” blond boy, who evolved into a star architect with two kids and younger girlfriend, in love with great alpha girl, and thin gay boy with cello who is kind of infatuated with him, even though he gets bullied or spared on a regular basis … Makes me cringe! The less important characters are even worse clichés. I know, though, that even those will probably turn out great on screen, played by the right actors of which there are still loads in Britain – probably more than ever - if this book will ever end up on screen, which I would be looking forward to a lot. Maybe people who like these books also have this kind of imagination when they are reading. I haven’t. So, it might be my fault that I got zero invested in any of these people, and this part of the “human stuff” is certainly not the reason that I read on. But the “character set-up” is just the surface. I soon overcame my disgust and almost immediately dived deeper, into the darkness …
The reason “The Cut” goes so much deeper than the average thriller, even to the point of the experience being disagreeable in a “good” way, is that the book is extremely dense and atmospheric, even more so than “Geneva”, because there is this uncanny sense of time and location, of being “bogged down” in a place in the past as well as in the present – or, even worse, needing to go back there. An atmosphere that often sounds, smells and feels uncannily like real memories. First reference to the multi-layered title: The Cut is a narrow lane or pathway where the kids have to pass through on their way home from school and where the bullying tends to happen. This is the kind of stuff that got me immediately, the recurrent “nightmare” through which all these characters are bound together. And it is the title of a film that is getting made in order to bring the past out into the open. The truth about it.
I first got stuck with the bits about the bullying. As in a lot of atmospheric detail and more than one biography, there are probably real memories woven in. It’s no secret that Richard Armitage once was the gay kid with the cello and oversized nose that got bullied at school, but until now this was just a bit of information about his past. Listening to his book, I could appreciate for the first time how absurd it really must have been for him to be turned into a national sex symbol when he played John Thornton. This book is an astonishing attempt of dealing with the past. As I wrote, I am just listening to it again. Good thing! It is more disagreeable to listen to than the first time – if one is willing to go “all the way” and expose oneself to the experience. By the way: great books are never about the author. They are about the readers.
The first bit about dealing with the past is referenced in the title and at one point explicitly, as explanation for making the film: the decision that “the cut” has to be reopened. As in: “This will hurt a bit!” Or, in this case, rather a lot. And a lot of people. Nonetheless it had to be done. In the novel there is more to it than the bullying, a whole case in need of reopening because somebody got killed and the wrong person ended up in jail. But I focused on the bullying, for obvious reasons. The rest is usually not part of one’s personal experience, though, strictly speaking, the bullying wasn’t either. But the way it gets represented in this book is a bit different from what we are used to in this kind of novel. Somehow it is not about putting the blame on certain people, making them accountable, but about the way “everybody” becomes a part of it, even the victim. I suppose this is the genuine experience behind it, and it might be the reason that, for the first time, I really dwelled on it and asked myself if it ever happened to me. There are so many things I forgot about the past, but this is not the kind of thing you’d forget, though … wait a minute! The thing I so conveniently forgot was that I bullied a girl in pre-school. I certainly hated her, but she had done nothing to deserve it. And this was not the reason I bullied her. I did it because I realized that I could!
So, this experience about why the cut needed to be reopened got unexpectedly and disagreeably personal. This SHOULD actually hurt a bit!
And there is another deeper personal level still, much more difficult to lay a finger on and even more existentially disagreeable. It is about getting to a certain age and about dealing with “our” past and our biographies. Last reference to the great title and what I was most impressed with: the decision that A CUT HAD TO BE MADE in order to deal with the past. At a certain age and regardless of our actual achievements, one thing we definitely have acquired is a past. We might want to get rid of it, forget it, cling to it in an absurd way like “top-dog” Ben Knot, but it is and progressively becomes what we are stuck with. What defines who we are because there is not so much left that we could become. Dealing with it in a truthful way most likely will be sad, and it will hurt, but it’s a big step to find a place to start.
