During the week I read this book I also watched the 70s film “The Conversation” for the first time, which turned out to be an incredible pairing. Both are tales of paranoia and loneliness, set in San Francisco, and end on notes of open-ended vagueness, refusing to wrap everything up in a tidy bow. Honestly, if this book had explained itself in the finale it would have felt false and not loyal to the two-hundred some odd pages before it.

Another story that came to mind was the novel “Death in Her Hands” by Otessa Mossfegh. Both are novels that will rub many the wrong way, featuring unreliable (and even unlikable) narrators that are trying to solve a mystery that they don’t even fully understand. Much like that novel, The Scapegoat obfuscates instead of clarifies, its central mystery, but both create deeply felt and rendered protagonists who I felt for by the end. I believe that Mossfegh’s writing provided more sympathy and emotion than Davis’s here, but nonetheless I found it to be utterly fascinating and difficult to wrap my mind around completely, which is a ringing endorsement.

The brevity on display here is its greatest strength, as the dreamlike sequences, as effective as they are, started to become slightly repetitive as it drew on. But the writing is sharp, concise and addictive, carrying me through a strange, smoky world with ease. 3.5/5

Ok, so what was this book about? Sorry, I simply don't get it.

I found this book interesting enough to keep reading, but I really don't know what I read. What was real and what wasn't? Was all of it a really strange fever dream? Was this book so clever that I didn't understand, or was not understanding the entire point? All I am left with is questions, and a sense that I missed something. Reading this book was definitely an experience.

Ehh.....I mean the author did a great job controlling the mood and the tone of this book. It was pretty confusing though, and normally I'd love to try and untangle everything that went on, but I just found so much of this book to be uninteresting and dull and I couldn't get myself to care. There's a whole separate thread about the missions in California and the atrocities there and I couldn't work out how to bring that into the storyline. I don't know, maybe others will read this and be intrigued and passionate enough to figure out what's happening here, but I wasn't.

"Maybe it would be nice to do something more tangible, I thought, to take a little break from musing on the two horoscopes, on the dreams, on how to position myself with respect to my father's death."

a dark little kubrickian nightmare

DNF

What did I just read. I feel like my brain was highjacked so I would finish this book. I want my time back.