Truly, Darkly, Deeply - Victoria Selman
What has happened has certainly pulled Sophie in several directions. Not only has she been uprooted from Massachusetts in America to London by her mother after her father left them, setting her up as an outsider in a way that makes her adolescent life difficult, but now as an adult she is torn when she looks back on her feelings for Matty Melgren, the man who was the closest thing she had to a real father. Matty is now in prison, convicted of the shockingly brutal murders of a number of young women in North London carried out by a serial killer known as the Shadow. He still protests his innocence, and his case is still a topic of hot discussion, books and films.
Aside from the trauma of having to reassess and deal with the knowledge that she was close to a convicted murderer, Sophie is also torn with guilt for the families of the murdered women, angry that she and her mother never noticed anything. She imagines that few could possibly have guessed or contemplated that, particularly as Matty never fitted what experts have assessed as the typical profile for this kind of killer. On the other hand she still even has doubts about what has taken place, wanting to believe his innocence.
In some ways Truly, Darkly, Deeply is about adolescence, about the growing awareness of the complexities of adult behaviour. "It's like getting halfway through a book only to find what you thought was chick lit is actually a horror novel", Sophie observes at one point, which might sound a little trite, but it does sum up the gulf that has to be bridged, the leap that has to be taken to reconcile previously held innocent views with a sudden clash with reality. There are other references made in passing to ideals being overturned by reality in the 1980s; Princess Diana's fairy tale wedding not having a happy-ever-after ending, Margaret Thatcher about to attack Argentina, all of which ties into the period and its own awakening to a new modern world reality.
There is potential to make more of this, and there is a case for considering the 80s as a time of relative innocence for a society about to face upheaval on a number of levels, certainly compared to the present day when we are constantly bombarded with horror of reality, but Selman doesn't choose to go down this route much further. And yet, it does remain one woman's journey to seek answers, to define who she is, to justify who she was with who she is now and who she wants to be. That necessarily must take in coming to terms with who her parents are and how she can define herself as an individual as part of a family and within the society around her.
As far as the crime thriller mystery around the investigation and identity of the perpetrator of the North London Murders is concerned, I found Truly, Darkly, Deeply less satisfying. The novel's focus is clearly much about the impact it has on Sophie than the impact of these crimes on society. From that viewpoint, the novel is still successful, in that it keeps you reading with growing horror at the implications that Matty, who she loves dearly, could be involved or be an innocent victim himself. There's definitely enough there to keep you intrigued how it's going to play out, hope that you will get answers and like Sophie, be prepared to not like what you find out. Personally I found the answers unsurprising and at the same time not entirely convincing at justifying what has come before.
Reading Notes: Truly, Darkly, Deeply by Victoria Selman is published by Quercus on 7th July 2022. Thanks to the publisher for the advance uncorrected proof copy.
