FINAL BOY

This is a horror novel about a female psychopath – Maeve is a young woman working in LA as a Disney Princess. She spends her evenings drinking in dive bars and entrapping soccer moms online to expose their racism. Maeve has a considerable darkness within her and is struggling to handle it. Her only real connections are her grandmother, who used to be a big movie star decades back and who is slowly dying, and her friend Kate from Disney who is wanting to be an actress and it feels like she will make it soon. Maeve knows that within two years she will be alone, and wonders how she will deal with all her inner rage when that happens.

The very obvious comparison to throw around is a female American Psycho or “Fleabag meets American Psycho” and that’s not miles away from the mark. The observations about current day LA are sharp and wry and when things go dark, they go REALLY dark. Maeve herself is very aware of Patrick Bateman and is happy to tell people that she works in ‘murders and executions’ just like Bateman’s line.

The main difference is that whilst Bateman is alienated and disconnected from his world and people in it, he still really inhabits its values and preoccupations (the exact shade of white on a business card, what sort of headphones people have, the intricacies of what ties and eyeglasses people wear and the ostentatious consumption) whereas Maeve is disconnected but doesn’t want any part of what everyone else around her wants and craves. Also, she just feels like a person – albeit a very dark one; whereas to me Patrick is almost a blank or void – a dark reflection of the emptiness all around him and of the period.

Maeve is whip-smart and funny and interested in things – they just aren’t the things that everyone around her is interested in. She’s fascinating to spend time with – dreadful, but fascinating. There are bits in American Psycho that are really funny (the business cards, the dry cleaners, the telling Tom Cruise that “I loved that film you were in – Bartender”) but Patrick himself is not actually a funny person. Maeve is funny. She’s also incredibly horrible and the violent set-pieces are just as appalling as American Psycho.

The last third in particular is… a lot. Maeve is put in a situation where she completely loses control, and becomes a blood-soaked torturing whirlwind.

I would have to caution people that if you didn’t like American Psycho, you’re absolutely not going to like this. And if you’re new to horror, I very much wouldn’t start here. There are three or four very gruesome scenes and Maeve does incredibly awful and violent things which are described in detail.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, this is an incredible piece of writing. The world is described so vividly, and Maeve is written in a way that makes you connect with her and she’s fascinating to spend time with. It’s a very skilfully written book and I’ll be very interested to see what the writer does next. It poses really interesting questions of the reader about how we feel about a female psychopath and the things that she does, and where your lines are.