Where to start with Sara van Os’s Decomposition Book? It’s compelling. Heart-wrenching. Strangely haunting and utterly devastating.
It follows two narratives: Savannah, who is dealing with the appalling fall-out of a falling-out with her ex-best friend, and Ava, whose body Savannah finds in the woods near her house. Ava has helpfully left behind a journal, detailing the weekend hike she set out on with two work colleagues – and how everything went so very wrong.
As a classic story of girl-meets-corpse, it makes it clear up front that this is a tragedy. Despite this, van Os creates a sickening sense of creeping dread/rising panic. I still hit the ‘bargaining’ stage of literary grief – surely there must be some hope for these characters! – despite the fact that Ava is very much already dead before the narrative even starts.
Decomposition Book is a survivalist nightmare (is there any other sort of survivalist experience? can you have a survivalist dream?) but also makes the excellent decision to make Ava’s torment cut as close to the bone of relatability as possible by including in her doomed hiking group a man named Chad who Simply Will Not Listen To Reason and instead must be coaxed gently into sense. It’s interesting that the phenomenon of ‘alpine divorce’ has been in the discourse recently: Chad is a warning that the arrogance of mediocre but overpaid men may kill us all.
It’s also a horrible horrible sick little book (complimentary) and made me actually physically nauseous at times. This is THE novel for fans of the TV show Yellowjackets. Also millennial lesbians, and anyone who enjoyed the sick thrill when the three wannabe filmmakers creating The Blair Witch Project realise they’ve been walking in circles for days.
This book has bothered and unsettled me for weeks, which is about as high a recommendation I can offer.
Emily Jessica Turner 