The Mixed Emotions of The Maidens

Very occasionally you can read a book that you don't enjoy, and think is terrible, and still not hate it. For me that is usually because there is some other emotional factor involved, which is the case with The Maidens [Alex Michaelides]. 

I bought it knowing that the reviews were lacklustre, but I was willing to read a comically pretentious Dark Academia thriller for a bit of fun. I popped it on as an audiobook during a deeply upsetting family crisis, which involved hours of driving and a solid day of cleaning in terrible circumstances. I didn't need anything clever, I needed something easy to follow and distracting while I was scraping years of filth off a kitchen floor and bursting into tears at random moments.  

So it was only when I had a few moments to myself, much later, that I was able to go 'oh wait, it really was awful.' 

The book follows Mariana, a fantastically wealthy group therapist, who is in deep mourning for her husband. She is guardian to her niece, Zoe, who is currently at Cambridge. When Zoe calls in a panic because her best friend has been murdered, Mariana goes to Cambridge and becomes suspicious of a charismatic tutor who singles out beautiful female students into a special 'study group', called The Maidens. Mariana tries to prove he is guilty despite overwhelming odds, as more Maidens start to die. 

This book wanted to be intellectual Dark Academia so much that it's actually embarrassing. If this author attended Cambridge then he didn't pay enough attention to his lectures - because the mythology and poetry that is discussed is only done at the most shallow 'I skimmed Wikipedia' levels. Again, this was fine for me, not needing a classics lecture whilst coated in grime and about as far away from Oxbridge as could be imagined, but it must have been a disappointment for anyone coming into this from other academia-themed stories.  

This is instead a mid-level episode of Morse or Lewis at best. Murders happen at a posh university, there's a messed up secret club, and ooh, it was the person you least suspected that done it! Time to switch off the telly and have a cup of tea and a biscuit before bed. The only difference is that instead of having a competent detective investigating, we have Mariana. 

Mariana hasn't trained in any sort of criminology or abnormal psychology. She's a group therapist and - based on the sessions we see - a dubious one at best. Still she feels quite superior to the detectives and expert criminologist in looking at one guy and deciding he absolutely did it despite his alibi and paper-thin motive.

A lot of reviewers have mocked the twist and it feels churlish not to join in: it's really stupid. I guessed the killer early on, on the basis that I've seen a lot of Midsomer Murders and know that it's always safe to guess the least obvious person. But when they are revealed... there has been no build up to it at all. It would be like me going 'Ah yes, I did it! And it was all because of what happened to me in Fiji!' and everyone around me going '...You've been to Fiji?' Only, instead of an unexpected holiday, this involves events that are never addressed outside the big reveal and are handled in a way that might genuinely be offensive. 

I don't have time to mock everything else but here's a quick rundown for the interested:

1. Mariana has a patient who is in actual crisis, and who is stalking her and self-injuring himself. She hands him a first aid kit and sends him on his way. 
2. The Maidens of the book title are barely mentioned and have perhaps ten lines between them. 
3. No one is suspicious of a professor who openly has a club of pretty groupies that he invites to private study groups and parties. Not even for the murder... just no one even finds it strange.  
4. The book features characters from the author's previous book. It's not a sequel. The book even ENDS on a reference to the first book which is confusing if you haven't read it (and why would you if it's not a sequel?). 
5. At one point Mariana follows someone and stays and watches when they have sex. Then she acts like it's suspicious when she's discovered and they are angry and threatening to her.
6. Mariana sneaks onto a crime scene and secretly interviews a suspect who is *in custody* without consequence.  
7. Marina gets mean-girl bullied by a bunch of teenagers in a therapy group she forced them to attend to try and get them to badmouth her suspect. 
8. The Maidens are daughters of important people - senators, royals, billionaires - but their families all seem chill letting them stay at a school where their immediate friends are being murdered one by one. 
9. Mariana meets a guy ten years younger than her on a train, is deeply uncomfortable at his pushy flirting, and then invites him into her investigation. It's implied in the epilogue that she is going to marry him. 
10. I have a psychology degree which is the most basic of psychology learning, and even I know that 99% of the psychology in this is bullshit. One module of abnormal psychology at what amounts to Community College makes me more qualified than this Cambridge educated therapist.
11. The book is interspersed with the killer's diary. Only if you listen on audiobook the killer has a UK accent despite the book obsessively working to make you think the killer is an American Professor.  
12. Mariana goes to a private dinner with the person she thinks is a killer and it only occurs to her halfway through that this might be dangerous. 

But the thing is... I still didn't hate it. Michaelides writes his female main character with more depth than most men achieve, and I was emotionally engaged with her decisions and despair, even when I thought she was being a grade-A dummy. 

This book covers grief well - the kind've long grief for which your life is forever split into before and after. Her perspective on the relationship is often moving, and it constantly plays on her mind without annoying the reader. The book repeatedly implies that her relationship with her father is causing her suspicion of the professor, but it would have worked much better if the book implied her grief was to blame. 

In fact, the book would have worked much better as a howcatchem rather than a whodunnit. If the professor was the murderer and Mariana spent the book trying to make herself believed, whilst those around her doubted her capacity... this would have been a stronger novel all around. 

All in all, this book kept me going through one of the more difficult days of my life. I'd much rather have a book I care little for tainted with bad memories than let my mood ruin a good one. 

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