The Risky, Reality-Bending Thriller You Need This Summer

New York Times

2 days ago

THE CATCH, by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Here's a dilemma. Despite its mind-bending premise, I don't actually want to talk to you about what happens in 'The Catch,' Yrsa Daley-Ward's first novel after a poetry collection ('Bone') and two nonfiction projects ('The Terrible' and 'The How'). I want to talk about how it happens.
'The Catch' follows semi-estranged twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey. When they were infants, their mother, Serene, vanished, presumed to have drowned in the Thames. As a result, both sisters were adopted, but by different families. Clara was adopted first, by a wealthy family who said that she 'appeared special right from the beginning,' but they left behind Dempsey, who was 'wheezing and small.' Dempsey was adopted a year later by a councilor. Now adults in their 30s, the same age as their mother when she disappeared, the two have a strained relationship. Clara's a spiraling but newly famous author launching a big book; Dempsey does clerical work and data entry.
Then Clara glimpses a woman who looks just like Serene. 'She is my mother,' Clara says, believing her to be Serene, come back. 'My very own mother.' Dempsey, however, sees this figure as a con woman out to manipulate her famous but disturbed sister.
It gets weirder. This discovered Serene has not aged a day in the years she has been gone. Furthermore, the events that unfold in the sisters' lives after Serene's reappearance are the same events and language found in the writing that Serene left after her death as well as the same language and writing that appears in Clara's blockbuster book, 'Evidence,' large sections of which appear in 'The Catch' itself.
That's the what of the novel. The how, though, is where the book reveals itself to be a rich and risky text.
Daley-Ward uses a full complement of textures to weave this book. The surreal drips into the moments of assumed sobriety, shifting the world around us as we read. To unfurl the story, she reaches for dark comedy, for drama, for poetry, for the absurd.
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