“The truth is, it’s surprisingly difficult to kill someone with a vegetable knife.
But as I was preparing carrot sticks at the time, it’s all I had.”
That’s Lalla Rook talking. In M.K. Oliver’s A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage (and doesn’t that tell you everything you really need to know?), she lives with her husband and two children in a leafy suburb on a hill overlooking North London. She usually has quite a bit on her to-do list. Right now, for instance, these are just a few of the items:
Help Stephen make partner. Secure dream house in Hampstead. Get Nelly into Adams Prep. Remove dead body from living room. Buy cake for Nathan’s fourth birthday party.
She hadn’t meant to kill the man (not this one, anyway), but he’d snuck up on her, so what was she to do? Nothing derails Lalla Rook from her goals, be it her unfortunate past, her over-inquisitive mother-in-law, Stephen’s uncooperative boss (a little blackmail might help there), and Adams’ snooty headmistress (a claw hammer should just fit into Lalla’s purse) (and, really, the class hamster that Nelly drowned – it’s hardly the fault of a child if a hamster can’t swim, is it?).
Of course, the police keep sniffing around, her friend Cait did see her wrapping the body in plastic (“He fell on his own knife.” “Seven times?”), and there’s the disturbing fact that someone hand-delivered a note to her husband that said, Your wife is not who she says she is.
“I do not, as a rule, look backwards,” Lalla tells us. “I like the past to be past, and the dead to be dead.”
But sometimes the dead just won’t cooperate.
A wildly entertaining novel, A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage will have you alternately gasping and laughing – and shocking yourself by how much you actually want Lalla to succeed.
What’s on your to-do list?
“It’s always tricky to pinpoint where an idea comes from,” says M. K. Oliver, “but on one cold autumn morning I was in the kitchen making a coffee as my wife was buttering toast.
“’I want to write something serial killer-ish…but what serial killers haven’t been done yet?’ I say, in the way you do at breakfast.
“’Muswell Hill mummies,’ she says, quick as a flash. Not sure if she was referencing any of her friends, or even her own personal feelings.
“My eyes widened a little and I left the room, sat at my computer and immediately wrote Chapter 1 of the book, almost as it now appears (minus a few typos).
“The idea of combining a serial killer with suburban mummies just brought a smile to my face. All the darkness and domestic detail, along with the rich comic potential. The wonderful contrast in tone between the day-to-day domesticity of husband-managing, children-organizing, work-balancing, and general life-plate-spinning, and the single-minded, mask-wearing, ruthless efficiency of the parasitical killer. It felt like a lot of delicious things to keep spinning and colliding.
“The story evolved really quickly as I imagined what would happen if a mother was cut off from shame and guilt, and allowed all her darker impulses and desires to dictate her behavior.”
To read more of Neil’s review and discussion with M.K. Oliver, go here.
