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Vivian Parry is an acerbic New York theatre critic, which brings her a kind of fame — and enemies. But, like many people with apparently glamorous jobs, she is miserable. Brought up without knowing her father, she has also never recovered from the death of her mother. Self-medicating with a steady flow of vodka and pills, she barely ingests any calories. Not surprisingly, she keeps fainting.
Yet Vivian is self-aware enough to know that her job is an elaborate compensation mechanism. Even as she sits watching and judging, part of her wishes she were on stage, rather than among the audience: “The desire to act, to participate, has never entirely left me.”
Herself a prizewinning New York Times culture reporter who has taught at Columbia University, Alexis Soloski portrays Manhattan’s thespian scene and high-end social life in vivid detail with snappy dialogue. This is an impressive debut.
The appearance of a man calling himself David Adler finally gives Vivian her chance. Adler says he is an academic, keen to interview Vivian about her work. Sure, she can’t find him on the internet, but she ignores the faint warning bell. And their encounter is deeply unsettling: Adler produces a devastating review of Vivian’s performance in a college production of Hamlet and her stress hormones erupt, her “breath coming shorter, blood singing”. She longs to flee but steels herself to stay.
Two weeks later, Adler’s fiancée Irina calls: he’s disappeared, and it seems that Vivian was the last person to see him alive. So Vivian breaks her iron rule not to get involved and is drawn into a world of mirrors, illusions and menace.
Like the best psychological thrillers, Here in the Dark, written in the first person, takes the reader deep into the protagonist’s psyche, exploring their secret terrors. Yet, after a while, Vivian’s relentless self-abasement becomes wearying for the reader.
When the pills and vodka no longer work, she tries rough, masochistic sex. The detective on Adler’s case becomes her lover; when he hits her in the mouth, she feels “so quiet, so calm, so easy in this body”. She asks for another blow, then another, before a bout of painful coupling.
Soloski uses the thriller format to raise intriguing questions about identity. Does an actor really feel the pain and passion of a character, or are they detached, just going through the motions? Eventually, Vivian takes control of her own production — and her perpetually surging emotions. A finely crafted ending is delivered with a smart and satisfying twist.
Here in the Dark by Alexis Soloski, Raven £16.99/Flatiron $27.99, 256 pages
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