Snap by Belinda Bauer (Penguin Random House, Bantam Press)
“On a stifling summer’s day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack’s in charge, she’d said. I won’t be long. But she doesn’t come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed forever.”
While a very popular genre, crime novels have never been at the top of my reading lists. Not for lack of interest! I went through a phase in high school when I bought and burnt through every Kathy Reich novel I could find, probably brought on by the fact that I was a massive Bones fan at the time. But after that brief obsession, crime novels rarely found themselves into my bookshelf. Until Snap.
A candidate for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Snap is a intriguing, sorrowful tale of loss, trauma and crime. I will be the first to admit that I probably would not have picked it up, or even known of its existence if it were not for the Belinda Bauer’s Man Booker nomination. Yet Bauer’s name has been around in the literary arena for quite a few years now. Her debut novel, Blacklands, earned Bauer the British Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for the 2010 best crime novel. Moreso, she is a prolific writer, having put out eight novels since 2009. So, it came as quite a shock, and quickly transformed to embarrassment, when I realised just how popular Bauer is, and yet I had never even heard of her. So, of course I had to give Snap a read.
Snap follows the young Bright family, Jack and his two younger sisters, Joy and Merry, some years after the murder of their pregnant mother. After their father walks out on them in grief, Jack takes on the responsibility of keeping his family together, constantly battling the fear that social services will find out there is no adult in the house, and split the siblings apart. Already aged beyond his years, Jack cannot get passed the trauma of losing his mother and struggles with his memories of his mother and wanting to know what happened to her. Set in the small British town of Tiverton, we meet numerous characters whose lives become inextricably linked by this one unsolved murder and string of robberies.
While anticipation is inevitable while reading a crime novel, Snap constantly leaves you in a state of curiosity and slight anxiety (but in the best possible way). And while the mystery is eventually discovered, the ending is a seemingly impossible mix of relief and dissatisfaction.
With less plot twists than expected, Snap painted a devastating look a loss, feelings of abandonment and the sheer complexity of human nature. Every character was incredibly multifaceted, and so convincingly real which gave me shivers at the thought that something like the crime in the novel could easily happen in real life. Probably my favourite aspect of the novel was how often I was left wondering how the different scenes lined up in the big picture – it was like putting together a puzzle!
The real question to answer, however, is what makes Bauer’s Snap Man Booker worthy? Aside from being the first crime novel to be nominated for the prize, demonstrating that genre should be no limitation to literary excellence, Bauer is a wonderful writer. In an interview conducted by the Man Booker Prize association, Bauer revealed that her novel was inspired by semi-true events, where a young girl carrying a baby on the side of the motorway was left to fend for herself when no one stopped for her. Bauer’s whole story questions the indifference of good people to do what is right, just because it difficult, but insist on the importance of rules and propriety in the face of an audience. This is exactly what makes her novel so compelling and incredibly important.
In conclusion, I am so glad I picked Bauer’s novel as the first read from the Man Booker longlist. Simply because it was an incredibly easy-going read, but highly addictive. But moreover, it forces us to reconsider, and be honest with ourselves, on the good we do for others. If you are a crime lover, but appreciate depictions of small town narratives, I highly suggest picking up Snap.
