See What I Have Done is a work of historical fiction about the Lizzie Borden axe murders. It is without doubt the worst book I’ve read in recent memory.
The story is divided into four first-person narrators: Lizzie, Lizzie’s sister Emma, Bridget the housemaid, and a totally random made-up character named Benjamin who spends most of his chapters hiding in the murder house, despite all the police and family on the scene. Benjamin’s inclusion is inexplicable–he brings nothing to the table, he didn’t exist in the real-life case, and the sisters’ uncle John’s motive in hiring Benjamin to rough up (or kill) the Borden father for mistreating the sisters makes no sense.
There is so much about this book I hated. The writing style is absolutely incoherent, with nonsensical imagery, inexplicable metaphors, and a desperate attempt to seem literary when all it is is convoluted and gross. Images and objects are repeated endlessly, particularly eating pears, reheating a disgusting mutton soup for days on end, clicking teeth, ticking clocks, and characters willingly tasting blood. No, I didn’t expect a book about axe murders to be all candy floss and marshmallow peeps, but the many gross smells, textures, and tastes seem repulsive just for their own sake.
My biggest complaint is nothing happens in this book. It’s a long slog through the day before and the day of the murder, with the exception of an epilogue-like chapter that oddly does not come at the end of the book. Every breath, movement, and thought of the thoroughly unlikeable characters are recounted in painfully slow detail. The author’s only original creation, Benjamin, is pointless. Schmidt brings nothing new or insightful to the circumstances.
I almost DNF’d this book, and I never do that. I hung in there with the hope the ending would wow me, but no such luck. This was a dull, unpleasant book that reads like an MFA student’s terrible first draft, and I should know, I wrote just as pretentiously and amateurishly in my own MFA program before my professors finally kicked my ass in the right direction.