Book Review: “Throw Me to the Wolves” by Patrick McGuinness

This thriller novel may be original, yes, but there are many improvements if we want to move to the ‘groundbreaking’ realm. There are a number of improvements this novel can make, but in my opinion I have to say that the book itself is mostly well written. It does the job of making a novel entertaining to read - but when we come to deeper thought things can get a bit sticky. For example: the first few chapters of the novel up to the first encounter with the young “Danny and Ander” are incredible in terms of deep philosophy to do with estuaries and memories, everything from existential crises of great solitude to wanting to be right there, jumping to your death. When it comes to the first encounter of Danny and Ander however, I feel like the book actually falls a bit flat. As if the author is no longer using those mediums of lengthy description and internalised metaphors. These great wordings and speeches of introspection that were felt before seem to vanish. I understand that Ander is supposed to be younger and therefore, not really into thinking about such things, but seriously - it is like the writing style changes entirely. From the chapters on Gary and the investigation to the chapters on Danny and Ander - I think there is a stark difference in writing which makes the reader more and more distant from Danny and Ander and makes us less likely to care until the unthinkable actually happens.

Another reason why I think that the chapters on Danny and Ander trailed off is because in these chapters, McGuinness is constantly trying to explain himself. He wants to explain why Danny is so within himself, why Ander is such an outsider, why there’s so much animosity towards these two children. And here lies the problem. Even though we know Ander, we don’t really know him and so, we’re constantly being told about him and yet, we aren’t ‘shown’ much about him. As we get deeper and deeper into the concepts surrounding Ander’s otherness, I think it is clear that the protagonist of the book is going to have a deep and personal connection with the man accused of the crime and thus, from the very moment that Ander is mentioned as an outsider - we get a cliché of outsider association. This is nearly obviously going to make the reader only assume that this character accused of the crime is in some way going to made to look a certain way because of his history with the main character. I will have to admit though, the unreliable narrator is used to the best extent here. So I’m impressed with that.

The first few chapters of the book that are well written are not really a comparison for the end of the book, which I felt was a bit hasty in its requirement to return to the beginning with all of its estuary metaphors and memory things etc. The main issue I had with the ending is that it was very matter-of-fact. From the moment a certain character is brought into the narrative, it’s almost impossible not to guess what is about to happen. Even though the accused’s investigation is a massive success, this book is filled with numerous clichés and strangenesses that manage to pull down the avid use of entertaining and metaphorical language.

The forensic investigation was a pleasure to read. As was the interview with the accused. These chapters, apart from the first few chapters up to the first “Danny and Ander”, were possibly the better ones from the book. When it comes to moving between the tenses of forensic investigation and the past regarding Ander, I think there’s a lot to be said about whether we only get the parts of Ander that matter to making him stand out from the rest rather than the story of the actual crime itself. You really have to wonder what you’re getting at here.

All in all, I found McGuinness’s book to do the most basic of things when it comes to reading a novel: it was entertaining. For the most part, it does make you think. But, when scratching beneath the surface a little - let’s just say I managed to guess the ending at the point where a certain character happened to enter the story.