Review by Max Dunbar
A Wrong in Time
At a literary festival in 1993 Thom Graves watches an author being interviewed. It’s slow going:
Toward the end of the hourlong interview the discussion had gotten a little livelier, maybe because Amis had steadily drunk his way through a bottle of red wine, and maybe because they had moved on from the topic of the novel being discussed, Time’s Arrow, and were now talking about pinball machines.
The mention of Time’s Arrow feels significant because it’s a life story told backwards – we start with an old man being brought to life in hospital, and day by day reverse time makes him younger and healthier. But there are horrors waiting in his past. Time’s Arrow is narrated by the old man’s soul, long divorced from his will, memory and thought processes. Along for the ride, the soul relies on intuition: ‘I am awash with his emotions. I am a crocodile in the thick river of his feeling tone.’ The past is ‘rushing towards me over the uneven ground.’
Kill Your Darlings begins with Thom being murdered by his wife Wendy. At first, you kind of understand why she does it. Thom is an annoying character in these early chapters. You get increasingly pissed off as Wendy does with Thom’s adultery, his literary pretensions, his furtive and diligent alcoholism. The guy’s a pain in the backside, and Peter Swanson does a fine job depicting the less pleasant rhythms of a long relationship – these little grooves of annoyance and repetition.
The following chapters look at Thom and Wendy’s relationship through the preceding years – the 2010s, the aughts, all the way back to the horrors in their past. At first the book seems like a honest but experimental portrait of a relationship. Thom and Wendy seem like ordinary liberal creative types living in the coastal village of Goose Neck. Their mysterious Gatsbyan wealth and their habits of secrecy don’t feel sinister. Their life seems real. Everyone remarks how well they seem to be doing as a couple and how they always seem comfortable in each other’s space. Their son is happy and chatty and well balanced. Whatever secrets Thom and Wendy share, it hasn’t corrupted anyone around them.
As we follow this extraordinary couple back in time, though, the novel gets tenser and scarier. It becomes more like One Day starring Marty and Wendy Byrde. As Thom gets younger he’s thrown into sympathetic relief. His boozing and womanising become explicable and forgiveable. When Thom dumps his girlfriend Catalina in 2009 – after a scare when his son goes missing – she asks: ‘Did you get what you were looking for from me?’ She elaborates on the question: ‘It’s just that when I met you, I knew that you needed something from me. I’m wondering if you found it.’ In 1998, Thom begins an affair with Ariel the minister who remembers him from church, and tells him: ‘I’d been thinking of you. You looked like you were there for a reason, like you were looking for something.’ Thom’s idealism and passion become more obvious as he gets younger. He did a lot to make the Graveses the power couple they became.
Husband and wife are both well realised characters but Wendy really does fascinate. Swanson gives her passion and cool pragmatism without ever dropping the ball of her contradictions. Wendy can be frightening but she never looks like a sociopath. She is very fond of her mother and brother and takes pleasure in their now settled lives. The passages about Wendy’s youth provide some great unexpected twists and zings. Her attitude is informed by rootless poverty and familial trauma. Wendy’s mother tells her: ‘The happiest people are the ones who are able to forget the past. Don’t be sentimental about people, I guess is what I’m saying.’
The Horrible Shared Past is a cliche in crime fiction. Peter Swanson’s wonderful novel maps the presentiments and echoes of irrevocable choices.
Max’s blog can be found here, he is @maxdunbar1.bsky.social at Blue Sky.
Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings (Faber & Faber, 2025) 978-0571393121, 288pp., hardback.
Harriet has previously reviewed 5 of Swanson’s novels – click HERE to see her reviews.
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