Letters from the past deliver deadly message
In the small North Yorkshire village of Saltburn, Audrey Hawken and her cohort receive letters they wrote when they were teenagers to their future selves, thanks to the English teacher who assigned them in class and mails them 20 years later.
Audrey discovers in hers a note from her friend Ben, who died on a school trip weeks after writing his letter. Mystified, she texts her picture-of-success friend Miranda what Ben wrote; but she never gets a response.
Dear Future Me
Miranda, upon reading her own letter to herself along with Audrey's message, walks out of her home without a word to her family. The next time we see her she is plummeting to her death from the heights at Huntcliff.
The tragedy shocks the community, especially Audrey — Miranda was one of few friends she stayed close with.
Audrey's life isn't what her teen self had imagined. After her parents' deaths she raised her younger brother, failed to get into Cambridge and now works cleaning homes — including that of her former peer, overachiever Kitty, a renowned professor.
Audrey is driven by grief to uncover the truth about Miranda's death and its connection to Ben's 20 years earlier.
O'Connor's prose is crisp and vivid. When Audrey's investigative dead ends pile up, she feels her 'inadequacies press down on her like gravity, pushing lower and lower, until she feels she might disappear into the ground itself.'
Excerpts from the letters deepen the mystery, uncovering the characters' past connections. But although presented in fonts emulating handwriting, the narrative voice sounds the same, as if the characters as teens are really their adult selves describing them. They admit things that ring true psychologically (such as the headmaster's son acting out just so his distant father will pay attention to him) but often in analytical terms with the benefit of hindsight.
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Having a struggling-to-pay-the-bills cleaning woman as her sleuth means O'Connor could have thrown drudgery to the wind and let the mystery relentlessly drive events. Instead she builds tension in a more true-to-life and satisfying way. Audrey juggles her efforts to find her former friends and discover the truth of Ben's death — and Miranda's — with taking paid gigs wherever she can, sometimes putting her up close with people she's investigating.
The discomfort of relying on her successful former classmates while learning their secrets leads to more shocks along the way, exposing the brittleness of social mobility and past dreams — for Audrey, and her friends.
One dramatic revelation about Miranda makes it seem Audrey has cracked the mystery — and it shows O'Connor's storytelling skill that, while it's stunning enough to satisfy Audrey (and perhaps the reader, for a moment), it's still not the whole story.
With its high-concept premise, intersecting lives and picturesque, semirural English setting — not to mention O'Connor's own experience as TV writer and producer — don't be surprised if this mystery makes for a captivating series to stream.
David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg writer and editor.
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