Two corpses, a knife and a woman that no one can wake up. This is how the plot of “Anna O” (The Ship of Theseus) could be summarized, which tells the story of Anna Ogilvy, a talented twenty-five-year-old writer who founded her own newspaper, comes from an important family and has a bright future ahead of her. to itself. One night, however, while sleeping, she stabs her two best friends to death and, from that moment on, she never wakes up. She was struck by what neurologists call “resignation syndrome”, a very rare psychosomatic disorder that puts her in a perpetual state of sleep. It will be Benedict Prince, a forensic psychologist expert in the field of sleep-related crimes, who will investigate Anna’s case, in an attempt to awaken her so that she can finally be put on trial.
“Anna O”, already published in thirty countries, is the narrative debut of Matthew Blake, an Oxford literature graduate and speechwriter for the British Parliament for ten years. Thanks to a novel structure programmed at the table to determine the suspense, the English writer, resorting to countless twists and the so-called cliffhanger (i.e. the interruption of a scene in its culminating moment), manages to construct a mystery capable of instilling a state of continuous tension and “to rob readers of sleep” (Giuliano Aluffi), .
It is not only the tension, however, that keeps you gripped by the 512 pages of the novel, because, in the words of Leonardo Sciascia, “the story is nothing, everything is in how it is carried”. And Blake turns out to be perfectly aware of this “bearing”: just think of the use he makes of polyphonic narration, the way he outlines the characters, his ear for dialogue and the atmosphere he manages to create. The result is a “literary” thriller that implies a broader narrative idea capable of imposing itself on the genre one.
“It takes a while before I finally find the strength to get up off the floor. I dry my eyes, take a shower, change my clothes. I deal with the situation as I always have. I’m like Anthony Hopkins in ‘The Remains of the Day,’ minus the immaculate tailoring. I find refuge in the austere comforts of stiff upper lips, emotional repression, and an unhealthy determination to mask deep fears through small household chores.
Clara always joked that my way of dealing with trauma was to load the dishwasher or start vacuuming. I evaluate the state of the apartment and then seek comfort by dusting and tidying up. My emotions may be mixed up. But my apartment is still under surveillance. Doing one movement after another is my therapy, my Freudian couch. As a psychologist, I think I should consider this my hallmark. Not the cure with words but the cure with reorganization. A bit like Marie Kondo.
This house needs a deep clean, it smells like too many takeout plates and unwashed cups. I wash the floor, I vacuum the bedroom carpet, I change the sheets, I furiously clean the stains left by the shower gel in the shower and delicately make the bathroom mirror shine. As I clean up, I think about that night in the Abbey garden with Bloom and my hopes of using this case to revive my career and impress Clara and KitKat. It seems ridiculously naive now. Bloom is dead. It’s Clara who saves me, not the other way around.”
“Described by the masters of noir as ‘the pinnacle of suspense’ (Jeffery Deaver) and ‘one of the best thrillers of the year’ (Lee Child), ‘Anna O’ stands apart from the mother of the whodunit. English to indicate a certain genre of detective stories) and by the majority of his followers for the stylistic approach. Blake writes with the confidence of a first-rate novelist, taking us into the no man’s land between sleeping and waking” (Enrico Franceschini).
