Title: The Cutting Season
Author: Attica Locke
Year Published: 2012
Format: Library Hardcover, 384 pp
Summary: Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation where the past and the present coexist uneasily. The estate’s owners have turned the place into an eerie tourist attraction complete with full-dress reenactments and carefully restored slave quarters. Outside the gates, an ambitious corporation has been busy snapping up land from struggling families who have grown sugar cane for generations, replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean. The list of suspects is long, but when the cops zero in on a person of interest, Caren has a feeling they’re chasing the wrong leads. Putting herself at risk, she unearths startling new facts about an old mystery—the long-ago disappearance of a former slave—that has unsettling ties to the modern-day crime. In pursuit of the truth about Belle Vie’s history—and her own—Caren discovers secrets about both cases that an increasingly desperate killer will do anything to keep hidden.
My Summary: Beautiful prose and a decent, but not excellent read. 3.5 stars.
*possible spoilers below*
My Thoughts: I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I saw a review somewhere in BookTube land and thought this sounded interesting. I borrowed it from the library back in November, renewed it twice, and finally decided I better get to it as it is due in a few days. 🙂 Also, the main character’s name is Caren and I’m Caryn, so woohoo. And she has a 9-year old daughter, and I have a 9-year old daughter. So that is also fun.
I enjoyed Locke’s writing style. It was easy to become engaged in the setting and the story. In fact, I read it in one sitting, last night.
The author raises a lot of really important themes, but unfortunately they are not explored with much depth. It left me curious and wanting.
Interesting relationship dynamics are introduced, but again, they remain shallow. Caren’s character has the most depth and growth. She struggles with her daughter’s growing independence and later acknowledges she has tried to keep her daughter to herself out of a fear of losing her. I also appreciated her deep compassion for Inés. However, the other characters, while somewhat intriguing, were not well-developed.
I also found the dynamics between Caren and Eric dissatisfying. Obviously their relationship is complicated, and the author does a good job of explaining their background to help the reader understand the complications. However, I was very put off by their intimacy and the fact that he then tells Caren that he loves his fiancée and will marry her. IN THREE WEEKS. I was annoyed both by Eric and his obvious lack of love for his fiancée, which made his decision to continue with the marriage frustrating and disappointing, but also the fact that he encourages Caren to live near him so he can have his happily ever after with all of his loves. I mean, what? I’m pretty sure Eric’s fiancée is going to have some super strong feelings about the weird post-coital tensions they are going to bring with them to DC. Haha. The tension and emotional complications in the relationship between Caren and Eric could have easily been accomplished without them falling into bed. The love they share was cheapened by their infidelity, not strengthened by it. It was completely unnecessary.
Perhaps the author wished to explore instances of “acceptable” infidelity as she also includes an intimate relationship between Inés and Gustavo, even though Inés misses her home and cannot wait to return.
The mystery was not so mysterious, but I didn’t mind that too much since I’m not a huge mystery reader anyway. But I was very disappointed with the lack of resolution regarding her ancestor Jason. It was crucial to the mystery and storyline and yet it was just dropped at the end under some vague idea of leaving the past behind. I think the author was trying to demonstrate that history and people are complicated and include many shades of grey, however the text creates very clearly a sense of Clancy = Bad and Jason = Good. So the injustice of the property non-fight was frustrating.
The potential in the book makes me want to try another by this author, so we’ll see. 🙂
Caryn Considers 