(AUDIO) BOOKS
When A Scary Last Act Confuses The Mind — A Critical Review
Book review: The Final Act by Sarah Bailey
There are many ways to tell a story.
Sometimes you start with the shocking end, then tell all that happened before. Starting somewhere in the middle is another technique, and then you share the before and after. And then, of course, you can write the events in a chronological order.
As said, there are different ways to tell a story, but no matter how you choose to share it, in the end, your reader should grasp the full story, even if you don’t wrap it up fully.
You can leave your reader to fill in some events, and leave them with question marks because it strengthens the mystery in the story.
Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, your story might just not do it for the writers. Is it them? Is it you? Those are debatable questions, and I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Sarah Bailey, the author
Working in advertising and communications, Sarah Bailey lives in Melbourne with her two young sons and is a writer of fiction. She has written several short stories and opinion pieces before she wrote her debut novel, The Dark Lake (2017).
This book, together with Into The Night (2018) and Where The Dead Go (2019), forms her Gemma Woodstock series.
The Housemate (2021) is her first standalone novel.
Her book called Final Act (2021) is listed as an Audible Original, and not mentioned on her personal website. However, I found evidence of it on the author’s Twitter. She had started this book before her debut novel, and only finished it in 2021.
The plot, a crime story about suicide
Pauly Johnson has a wife and two daughters, and is a successful surgeon at a hospital in Melbourne, but he’s a troubled man. Troubled enough to want to commit suicide.
He gets in his car in the middle of the night, and drives on a lonely road to a lookout point. He’s determined to end it all, but before he can, a woman appears and steps right in front of the car.
Her life ends; his saved.
Shocked at the events, Pauly needs to find out who the woman was and why she wanted to kill herself. It becomes an obsession, and eventually he investigates together with her husband and the help of others. Answers lead them uncomfortably closer to Pauly’s home.
I continued to listen… for the wrong reasons
The book has four parts. Parts 1 and 3 are called ‘The End’, Part 2 is ‘The Past’ and the last, Part 4 is ‘Afterwards’.
‘The End’ deals with the current story, and ‘The Past’ with things that made Pauly’s life a troublesome one. There’s witnessing abuse and being blackmailed and drugs, but to be honest, when I listened to Part 2, I was sort of lost, wondering how in the world it connected with Part 1, except that Pauly was a part of it.
It introduced new characters, and yes, those also feature in Part 3, but the story had lost its strength, its momentum. Personally, I think the major story shouldn’t have been interrupted by ‘The Past’, but the author should’ve worked the details mentioned in that part into the main story.
Why did I continue to listen?
I think I waited for the story to get better. It turned out to be a crime novel of sorts, but not a very strong one, in my opinion. Yes, the story definitely has potential, but I miss details. After listening to the book, I am still not clear on exactly why Pauly wanted to commit suicide.
By the time the story unfolds, a daughter of Pauly is involved in the crime. Why hasn’t the reader learned about the daughter earlier? Yes, the reader knows Pauly has a wife and two daughters, but no one sees it coming that the daughter can be part of the crime.
As I said, this story has potential for sure, but the facts of it should all be thrown onto one pile again, and then represented to the reader in a different order.
