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Christopher Bollen
Havoc
Havoc
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Crackling with the perceptive, acid wit of The White Lotus and haloed by Shirley Jackson’s cruel, dark magic, Havoc is a decadent and ghastly delight.
Sam's Review
For my daughters, Anti-Hero is a Taylor Swift song. For literature, it is the fatally flawed character who, despite all our best instincts, we find ourselves rooting for. And for me, for a while at least, it will be a kafkan-wearing, pistachio-cookie eating, sun-shy retiree from the American mid-west.
Havoc, Christopher Bollen's sixth novel, is a charmingly nasty thriller in the vein of Patricia Highsmith and Celia Fremlin. Almost entirely confined to the grounds of the Royal Karnak hotel in Luxor, once glamourous but now "shedding, pilling, mildewing and mouldering,” the story centres on the battle of wits, nerves and increasingly murderous intent between our narrator and anti-hero, Maggie Burkhardt, and Otto, a devilishly precocious 8-year-old. It takes place during the height of Covid, a device which traps the characters in place and provides a context or excuse for the increasingly fevered paranoia of all involved.
Maggie has spent the past few years in Europe, having left the US shortly after the death of her beloved husband, Peter. Left in her Milwaukee house on her own and with friends drifting away, Maggie upended her life and took up residence in hotels where, if nothing else, she was "recognised as a physical entity taking up space.” But her presence is not passive. Maggie delights in liberating "people who don't know they're stuck,” inserting herself into the relationships of hotel guests who she deems unhappy, so that she may "...engineer a fork in the road, the miraculous moment when the prison door falls open, the rare and precious possibility of a second chance." One such effort, while living in a Swiss hotel, went awry, forcing Maggie to flee Europe for Egypt, the only country that would accept her under the restrictions of Covid lockdowns. But, as she explains, "I don't like to think about the murder."
The plot offers the pleasure of unexpected twists and turns. Having made herself at home in The Royal Karnak and becoming friends with its manager, Ahmed and two other long-term residents, Maggie initially represses her interfering urges. But then she set her sights on Tess, a mother who, with her son Otto, has fled an unhappy marriage in Paris. Maggie wants to become a surrogate grandmother to Otto, a confidante to Tess; to adopt the two of them and fill the whole left by Peter and Julia, her own daughter who, we are told in vague terms, died horribly prior to Peter's death. Her efforts to woo Tess and Otto's affections seem to be working, with Otto keeping her games secret after spotting her coming out of another guest's room mid-meddle. But almost immediately, the tables are turned; Otto blackmails Maggie and puts her at odds with Tess. From here, the two of them descend into a spiral of increasingly vicious and deadly encounters, Maggie's mental health deteriorating as fast as her stock of disappearing medication, with the staff and hotel guests collateral damage in their battle.
Havoc seems like a good holiday book - utterly preposterous and prone to plot-holes – but it’s written with a verve that lifts it well above an airport thriller. It’s also a complex portrait of Maggie. While she’s clearly an unreliable narrator - her stories of life with Peter and Julia conflict - but whether this is the fading of memory, the obscuring of pain or the concealing of truth is deliberately left unclear. An attentive reading will find hidden turns-of-phrase and small asides which suggest that Maggie’s ‘real’ story is indeed tragic. Havoc also shows the vulnerability of aging, and using Otto as a counterpoint, Maggie’s fear of redundancy, as youth comes to claim its place at the table.
Maggie’s delight in meddling, her complete lack of self-awareness and her murderous intent should make her a thoroughly unlikeable character. But, due to the skill and liveliness of Bollen’s writing, we find ourselves cheering for Maggie, even as she tries to ruin one child and forget another. Havoc is murderously good fun on the surface with complexities bubbling just beneath, much like the anti-hero at its heart.
Publisher Review
'Highsmithian… highly readable, twisty and shrewd' HANYA YANAGIHARA (on Instagram), author of A Little Life
'Atmospheric, diabolical fun' LUCY FOLEY, author of The Midnight Feast
'Disturbingly enjoyable' EMMA HEALEY, author of Elizabeth is Missing
'A taut, wicked masterpiece' MONA AWAD, author of Bunny
Five years ago, 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt fled her native Wisconsin in suspicious circumstances. She has come to rest somewhere she can imagine staying forever: the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.
Maggie is no sweet little old lady. She has a nasty, nosy habit: she spies on her fellow guests and manipulates situations to 'liberate' them from what she sees as unhappy relationships.
Wrongly assuming eight-year-old Otto and his well-meaning mother will be easy targets, she is soon locked in a death-spiral with her young prey. Has she finally met her match in a child one-tenth her age?
Crackling with the perceptive, acid wit of The White Lotus and haloed by Shirley Jackson’s cruel, dark magic, HAVOC is a decadent and ghastly delight.
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