When it comes to mysteries, I find the plot to be almost the least interesting thing–as long as it’s not too lazy or derivative or actively insulting to the reader, and fits into the vibes of the story. What I do care about, then, are the vibes–if the vibes are there, if the texture of the story is something I can snag myself on, I don’t really worry about clues or reveals (which I’m bad at predicting anyway).
The vibes are pretty immaculate in Knife River, a slow queer novel about figuring out how to be a person in a world where everything is dark and askew. Knife River is a small town in upstate New York; while a lot of crime novels set in small towns hinge on the unlikeliness of violence within a pastoral setting far from the shadows and neon and casual brutality of the big city, Knife River is already in a state of decay and decline–industries have closed, close-knit community has become claustrophobic, and it’s the kind of place that people grow up wanting to leave. It’s a bit Twin Peaks, a bit Poker Face, a bit Sharp Objects, a bit Dead Loch, a bit “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”, but it’s also its own thing, with its own peculiar melancholy and beauty.
Narrator Jess left Knife River in her late teens, leaving her older sister Liz behind to cope with the emptiness left behind by their mother’s disappearance when Jess was thirteen. Instead of a Dead Girl, then there’s a missing mother–a woman with a complicated life and secrets who remains unknowable, rather than an objectified girl who becomes a subject only when the traces she leaves behind are put together. The police aren’t very helpful, and the man Liz suspects, with a history of small-scale violence, refuses to do anything incriminating over the years, despite her vigilance. Liz still hopes that their mother will call the landline of their childhood home, so she stays put–meanwhile, Jess’s life is a side-hustle, essentially, a series of short-term gigs and short-term stopovers in more functional women’s beds and homes, zero full commitment to anything, occasional phone calls with Liz.
But when their mother’s bones are discovered by a child playing in the woods, Jess comes home to support Liz in seeking answers. What follows is a complicated and fraught reconnection with her old secret high school girlfriend (who is now involved with the cop looking into Jess’s mother’s case), with Liz and what they owe to each other, with the idea that her mother had a life and a self outside her own memories–and that life had its more complicated aspects.
Right then as I was nearing the end of the road, something caught my eye. A brief flicker in the trees. I froze, startled, narrowing my gaze. And I swear to you, for a passing moment, just a fraction of a second, I saw my mother. She was looking straight at me, her expression neither happy nor sad. She looked as real as any other person. I was stunned. Seized with disbelief and fascination. The moonlight cast her in a silver glow. Her red kerchief moved in the breeze. Her eyes blinked. She leaned against a tree and appeared to breathe. I could see her chest moving beneath her clothes.
Then a dog barked in the distance, and I turned my head. When I looked back, she was gone. (59-60)
This took me a while to read but that was partly because I was savouring it; partly because absent mothers are a bit of a sore topic for me; overall I loved it, though I would have been fine with a more bittersweet, or even bitter, ending.
Title quote from “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”; the version I know best is from Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album.