A review of Anna O by Matthew Blake
By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
Anna O, written by British debut author Matthew Blake, is lauded as “the biggest new crime thriller novel for 2024 from an astonishing literary fiction voice”.
The book became a global sensation on submission in June 2022, with a record-breaking 16 international offers within 48 hours. It ended up securing “three separate seven-figure deals in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany and another multiple seven-figure total from pre-empts and auctions in territories around the world”.
Anna O tells the story of a young woman who is accused of murdering her two best friends. Anna Ogilvy was found asleep, with a kitchen knife in her hand, her clothes bloodstained. There was even a text message containing her confession: “I’m sorry, I think I’ve killed them.”
Trouble is, no one and nothing can wake her up. Those who believe in her innocence call her Anna O. Those who insist on her guilt call her Sleeping Beauty.
Four years later, Dr Benedict Prince, a forensic psychologist specialised in sleep-related crimes, accepts the task of supervising Anna’s treatment at the Abbey Sleep Clinic in London. His professional duty is to awaken her and get her fit to stand trial. But his moral duty is to see her return to a healthy, normal life.
Such a premise, full of mysteries and possibilities, is every storyteller’s dream. A lifelong fan of Agatha Christie and mystery fiction, Blake does a brilliant job pacing the story and maintaining its sense of suspense and thrill until the very last page, dishing out subtle clues and plenty of literary Easter eggs along the way to tease readers.
In true Christie fashion, the story is told from the perspectives of multiple characters, with Ben and Anna (mostly via her notebook) being the major first-person protagonists. Experienced readers would be looking for unreliable narrators (and often thinking they have found them), but
anyone trying to sneak a peek at the end chapters would be risking their own peril. Indeed, the fun of reading this story is to go through the twists and turns while deciphering the dizzying yet delicious details revealed through numerous journal article abstracts, webpage summaries, diary entries, interviews, and government, library and media archives. Particularly fascinating are the medical, legal and psychological sides of the story.
The dark side of the human psyche is forever awe-inspiring. Anna O not only delves deep into this darkness, but it further invokes empathy in the same way that some readers have felt for Dr Hannibal Lecter. Meanwhile, Ben’s love for his family and his compassion for Anna makes him an identifiable character, and his methods for treating resignation syndrome is a shining beacon in the shadowy, snarling world made so.realistic in the story.
Anna O will be available for readers in Australia on February 1, 2024.
Disclaimer: This assessment is based on an advanced review copy of the book supplied by its publisher HarperCollins via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased evaluation (DRM PDF file output date June 28, 2023).
