The Death of Us by Abigail Dean is a taught, tense yet highly emotional novel with a unique premise. As in, I haven’t read a crime thriller with this character POV before and I was hooked from the opening pages. Our lead character, Isabel, is writing her statement for a court case, it’s an open letter to the man who broke into her home and attacked her.
Opening sentence: Let me talk again, then, about the night you came to our house.
The South London Invader
Twenty-five years ago, a man broke into Isabel and Edward’s house and now, he’s finally been caught. So The Death of Us is both Isabel and Edward (we get chapters from him too) processing the new information of the capture of Nigel Wood (AKA the South London Invader) and the court case which means they are being forced to reflect on what happened to them to write their witness statements.
When it comes to the things I love – and, in your case, the things I despise – I have always been an obsessive person.
In her retrospective, Isabel goes right back to telling Nigel how she first met Edward and then the story of their life so we, the reader, can see both how their relationship worked and how it has been damaged.
Isabel and Edward were both very rounded and real characters, I felt very invested in both of them from the beginning and really wanted to see how their story played out.
The cost of it all
I was flummoxed by how easily we had waded into unhappiness.
As well as the crime thriller element, which kept the pace ticking over nicely, The Death of Us is a look at relationships and how trauma affects people in different ways. Seeing how this terrible event takes its toll on Isabel, Edward and the other victims of Nigel, in the years that follow is heartbreaking and an exploration into how one man’s actions can damage so many people.
You changed the way I walked home on a Friday evening. You changed the taste of wine, the plot of a novel, the confidence of Edward’s hands.
I appreciate I haven’t made this sound like the cheeriest book, and it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great read, because it absolutely is. The Death of Us is really wonderfully written, it balances the emotional and traumatic impact of a terrible crime like this with characters you care about and a commentary on trauma and crime.
I also really enjoyed Girl A by Abigail Dean, which also covers a crime story with a unique POV.
