The Beguiling begins with Lucy and her cousin Zoltan. The two cousins have maintained a close relationship since they were children. Following a bizarre accident at a party Zoltan is now in hospital and makes a dying confession to Lucy. After this powerful experience Lucy begins to attract more confessions and more confessions from various encounters with a wide array of people she meets.
While reading The Beguiling I felt it was a strange story and wondered where it was headed. I’m not sure if I ever did figure out where the story went. I would probably have to read it a second time to get a better grasp on the story if that is even possible.
I read some other books reviews to see what impressions other reader’s got from this mysterious story. One review said they didn’t know exactly what they had read but knew it was something good. I agree with that assessment. The Beguiling like its’ title is an enticing story.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for allowing me to read an advanced digital edition of The Beguiling.

“That’s the thing with hindsight: it threatens you with its certainties, rewrites everything you know.”

And that’s the experience of reading The Beguiling. It is that most confounding type of book: the kind you get to the end of and immediately want to turn back to page 1 to reread it with the knowledge of all it contains in an effort to understand it. I’ve often wished I could be at the start not the end of books that I’ve loved, but this is different. It’s that feeling of needing to reread it to try to make sense of it. Reading Infinite Jest was similar as was Bina.

At the start of The Beguiling, Lucy’s cousin dies and it is after this that she finds that she has somehow become a confessor. People everywhere need to share with her events from their lives which are dark or difficult or even criminal. Gartner handles this by following Lucy in the main narrative and then, when she meets someone, there’s a break, and what seems like a new story starts. You come to realize that these vignettes are the stories—indeed, confessions—of these individuals. As a reader, there’s a sense of displacement as you step I to the middle of these new characters’ stories, but somewhere partway through it starts to cohere. Maybe. To be honest, I’m still trying to put the pieces together. But that’s a good thing.

The Beguiling came up in my research for which books would be eligible for the Giller and I was intrigued by it so I requested an eARC on NetGalley because it wasn’t yet available. And while it didn’t make the Giller long list, it did turn up on the Writers’ Trust shortlist and I’m so glad because it’s a thought-provoking, witty read. But what it really means? I’ll be working on that for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and PenguinRandomHouseCa for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I tried, but I just couldn't get into this book. I may try again later, but for now, this book was just not for me.

The Beguiling has an incredibly interesting framing devise, which centres main character Lucy as a walking confessional to people she meets on the street. These people, often beguiling in their own rights but also sometimes lewd and sometimes pathetic and sometimes full of heart, really find themselves at the core of this novel. It functions on many levels as a series of vignettes or short stories that weave into the larger narrative, and unfortunately, I just... failed to connect, either with the characters or with the narrative.

I remember reading Zsuzsi Gartner's previous book of short stories (Better Living Through Plastic Explosives) and loving it, so was excited to see what she would do with the novel form here in The Beguiling; in my experience, authors don't always excel equally at both formats. And Gartner pulls off a slick trick here: By conceiving of a fascinating and original frame story, the main character meets a bunch of other people who essentially tell her a wide range of beguiling short stories, and we readers get to have our cake and eat it too. And to be sure, the frame story felt increasingly tricksy for tricks' sake to me as it went along, but it eventually got to a place that proves the entire tale couldn't have been told any other way. Funny, bizarre, thoughtful, and jolting; this was a weird and satisfying ride.

Lucy's favourite person growing up was her cousin Zoltán – a soft-bodied, perennially friend-zoned lover of old movies and all around good boy – and shortly after Kinkos, the laughing yoga instructor, the Thing and its aftermath, strangers started approaching Lucy and telling her their darkest secrets: some criminal, some merely embarrassing, Lucy somehow becoming “a confession magnet, a lay confessor. A flesh-and-blood Wailing Wall.” Whereas Gartner's earlier book was (as I remember) a collection of strange stories centered on Canadian suburbia, the stories that the confessants share in The Beguiling are more global: still strange, still plenty of Canadiana, but also set in places like Denmark, Ireland, and Australia, too. We follow along with Lucy for thirteen years into her future, witnessing how the confessions – as much as she grows to crave them – disrupt her life, and despite me not wanting to give away any spoilers, I think I can add how delighted I was when the ending made me reconsider everything that had happened up to that point.

I don't want to risk spoilers by saying too much more but will reiterate that this novel is a little twisted but paid off in the end for me.

4.5 stars

"To beguile: To distract the attention of; divert; To amuse or charm; delight or fascinate."

Oh my! Zsuzsi Gartner's novel is full of beguilement: distracting and amusing, fascinating and delightful. Reading it felt like looking through a kaleidoscope at the surreal world of Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" while riding a tilt-a-whirl. Quite often, I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I knew I was enjoying the ride.

The story (as I understood it): Lucy, our protagonist, is overwhelmed with grief over the strange and untimely death of her beloved cousin. Abandoning husband and newborn, she moves to Vancouver and, while patching together a new life and trying to make sense of her past, begins to notice that strangers are compelled to confess their deepest, inky-black secrets to her. She becomes a sort of sin-eater, addicted to numbing her grief and shame through listening to others' tales of past misdeeds. One tale leads to the next, taking the reader on a sometimes dizzying quantum journey through space and time.

This skeletal summary sounds rather gloomy yet Gartner's novel pulses with life and laugh-out-loud humour. Her prose has a snap-crackle-pop to it that's all too rare and her characters--especially Lucy--brim with life.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this arc in exchange for a fair review.