Constant Reader Book of the Month February 2023: That Weekend by Kara Thomas

 

Note: In order to best explain why I think this particular book is a must-read, I am going to be giving away far more details about the plot and revelations than I usually do in these reviews. To say this is a spoiler warning is both an understatement and inaccurate because the details matter far more than the lot. Consider yourself warned.

In the summer of 2012, the world was held breathless by Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl,  a masterpiece that started with the possible abduction of an abused wife and halfway through completely turned the tables on what we thought we knew about the missing woman. As much as I was enraptured by the novel and the film that came after it, in my heart of hearts I feel that Kara Thomas’ That Weekend, a YA novel that is clearly inspired it in both set-up and revelations, is far superior. Gone Girl, for all the genius of the plot and the characterization, made it very hard to feel sympathy with either of the leads. At a similar point in That Weekend, Thomas switches perspectives and when the truth is revealed, not only do you understand why everything happened, you will feel infinitely more sympathy then we ever did for Amy Dunne.

That Weekend starts out as the story of Claire, a high school senior who has recently been dumped by her boyfriend and has been invited to spend a weekend with her best friend, Kat Marcotte and her boyfriend, Jesse.  Very quickly we learn that as much as she cares for Kat, she’s been jealous of her for a very long time, mainly because she has been carrying a torch for Jesse before and she believes that Kat stole him from her.

The novel begins with Claire being roused from unconsciousness by a paramedic, with a major head injury and no memory of the previous thirty-six hours. She goes through treatment from doctors and nurses before her parents show up. Eventually she learns that Kat and Jesse have disappeared and she has no memory of it.

During the next week, things progress from bad to worse. Kat’s parents show up and they seem different  - Kat’s father is upset, but there’s something lurking beneath the surface. Her mother is detached and when she breaks a coffee mug, there is something very weird about how quickly she cleans it up. Kat’s grandmother, Marian, a former Congresswoman seems similarly detached and doesn’t quite seem to believe Claire’s story about her amnesia. Claire begins to find things in her pockets that she doesn’t know how she had. The FBI shows up to gently question her, and Claire doesn’t seem to satisfy them with her responses.

Then things get infinitely worse. Claire schoolmates begin to start harassing her on social media. A Nancy Grace style reporter publicly makes Claire guilty by association. Claire’s parents get her a lawyer, but its almost too late – by this point the search for Kat and Jesse has led to them to a reservoir, and the media is calling it a retrieval not a recovery. Kat’s father is hit by a car by a young man who seems to have demanded ransom, and a blood stained handkerchief is found with Kat and Jesse’s blood. All this is too much for Claire who at the end of the first section of the novel tries to kill herself.

We then flash forward six months. Claire has spent a lot of that time first in an institution, then therapy and is still obsessed at finding out what happened to her friends. She is urged by a therapist and then the FBI agent who investigates the case to let it go. The agent actually tells her that “even when people do find (out) the answers aren’t enough. The emptiness is still there. Sometimes its even worse.”  Claire will very soon find out that he was telling her the truth.

If you’ve read Gone Girl, then the fact that Kat Marcotte and Jesse are actually still alive will not come as a shock. What will come as a shock is that Kat’s plan was not manufactures out of some sociopathic nature but rather pure desperation from a situation that no one should be a part of.

Kat Marcotte has lived her life as a perfectionist, someone who had everything. What no one knew was that she would have traded all of it to live in an apartment in New York the size of a closet. Her life has been destroyed by two horrible monsters, both of whom she’s related too.

Kat’s father, you see, is the worst kind of family predator. His wife and his children have lived in utter terror of him there entire lives. Kat’s mother is in such fear of him that even after he screams at her so violently over a cracked egg, when family services are called in, she immediately covers for him when they show up. Kat’s sister has gone to boarding school to get away. Kat has no such luxury. She has spent her entire life focusing on getting to NYU in order to escape from him. But before she can do so, her life is destroyed by the second monster.

Marian Sullivan-Marcotte may be one of the most horrible people I’ve read about in any book. When I think of her, I am reminded of Mary Louise White, the mother of Perry who Meryl Streep memorably played in the second season of Big Little Lies.  Mart Louise was cold and detached, convinced that her daughter-in-law had lied about her beloved son died, refused to accept the idea that he had abused her, and actually believed the woman he had raped had done something to lead her precious son on. When she attempted to sue for custody of her grandchildren, the viewer never believed for a moment that this was ‘in the best interests of the boys’ – it was all about her denial of who her son was, something she refused to accept to the bitter end.

Marian is exponentially worse because she’s known who her son is for a very long time and has been spending her wealth and position to make sure no one knows. We learn she made for Kat’s sister boarding school so she wouldn’t talk to anyone, made sure when her son’s behavior became too obvious at the military that it seemed like he ‘retired’ instead of being forced out, and mentions ‘some disgusting allegations made by a woman about her son’, which are pretty close to admitted that he raped someone. None of this, I should mention, has anything to do with the idea that she loves her son: there is no indication in this book that she is even capable of it. She has been controlling her family with money for years, she does the same to make sure that Kat follows the career path she has laid out for her.  When Kat finally tells her in utter desperation about the fact that her son strangled her to the point she nearly died, Marian does as much as she can to blame Kat for what happened before changing the subject to breaking up with Jesse.

There is no sign Marian has ever cared for anyone or is even capable of it. Near the end of the novel, the only sign of affection she gives is clearly staged for the authorities. The only time she seems genuinely upset is when she tells Kat that “she’s destroyed this family.” By this point in the novel, we’re inclined to think this can only be a good thing. When Marian goes out of her way to help her granddaughter at last, we know that it has nothing to do with guilt or shame, it’s about controlling the narrative. Image matters to her more than human life.

I’m not going to spoil anything by saying that Claire does find Kat. What I will say is that when she does, something incredible happens. Our sympathy goes completely away from Claire and goes directly to Kat for the remainder of the novel.  I won’t reveal the exact circumstances, but it is worth noting that even when Claire learns how horrible everything was for Kat, she actually seems more upset that Kat couldn’t share this with her than the actual abuse. At one point Kat shares that she had to get a dislocated shoulder popped in on her seventh birthday as an example of just how horrible her life was. Claire is completely petulant. In the room with a man who has already tried to rape her and has everything intention of killing her, Kat says she won’t leave her alone with him Claire replies: “I’d rather be alone with the rest of the night then spend another single second with you.” By this point she knows just how bad the abuse has been and she still doesn’t seem to give a damn.  Claire actually seems angrier now that she knows the truth then when she didn’t.

I won’t give away the final pages of the novel or the final horrible twist of the knife that we finally learn about the relationship between Kat and Jesse. What I will tell you is that the final pages of the novel tell us the respective fates of Kat and Claire. And when I see Claire at the end, I was reminded of Martin Landau’s character at the end of Woody Allen’s masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanors. Claire has come through this horrific experience and has done something even worse than Kat, but actually feels she can move on. But what of Kat? In the final pages, we see she might even be in a worse situation than she when she did what she did, even more at the mercy of her family, a pariah on social media and finally realizes that she did everything she did for monsters even worse than she was.  God is never mentioned once in this novel as it is throughout Crimes and Misdemeanors, but you get the feeling in the denouement that there is no more morality or fairness in That Weekend then there was in that particular world. Claire still has no memory of what happened to her then she did at the beginning of the book. Maybe if she did, she might have actually felt some level of remorse for her own actions which have proven just as ruinous to Kat’s as her family’s were, and have left her even worse off than Claire ever was.