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His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae (Man Booker Prize Finalist 2016) Hardcover – October 18, 2016
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Named a Best Book of 2016 by Newsweek, NPR, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Sunday Times!
In the smash hit historical thriller that the New York Times Book Review calls “thought provoking fiction,” a brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae. There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? And will he hang for his crime?
Presented as a collection of documents discovered by the author, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers of Culdie, Ross-shire. They offer conflicting impressions of the accused; one interviewee recalls Macrae as a gentle and quiet child, while another details him as evil and wicked. Chief among the papers is Roderick Macrae’s own memoirs where he outlines the series of events leading up to the murder in eloquent and affectless prose. There follow medical reports, psychological evaluations, a courtroom transcript from the trial, and other documents that throw both Macrae’s motive and his sanity into question.
Graeme Macrae Burnet’s multilayered narrative—centered around an unreliable narrator—will keep the reader guessing to the very end. His Bloody Project is a deeply imagined crime novel that is both thrilling and luridly entertaining from an exceptional new voice.
- Print length300 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSkyhorse
- Publication dateOctober 18, 2016
- Dimensions6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101510719210
- ISBN-13978-1510719217
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Both a horrific tale of violence and a rumination on the societal problems for poor sharecroppers of the era.”
—TIME
“Clever and gripping.“—Library Journal, starred review
“One of the most convincing and engrossing novels of the year.”—The Scotsman
“A truly ingenious thriller as confusingly multilayered as an Escher staircase.”
—Daily Express
“There is no gainstaying the ingenuity with which Burnet has constructed his puzzle..."
— The Telegraph
“…sly, poignant, gritty, thought-provoking, and sprinkled with wit.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“[A] powerful, absorbing novel… Fiction authors from Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov to Gillian Flynn have used [an unreliable narrator] to induce ambiguity, heighten suspense and fold an alternative story between the lines of a printed text. Mr. Burnet, a Glasgow author, does all of that and more in this page-turning period account of pathos and violence in 19th-century Scotland… [A] cleverly constructed tale… Has the lineaments of the crime thriller but some of the sociology of a Thomas Hardy novel.”
—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
“…recalls William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner in the way it portrays an abused people and makes the ensuing violence understandable… His Bloody Project shows that the power held by landowners and overseers allowed cruelties just like those suffered by the Virginia slaves in Confessions. Halfway between a thriller and a sociological study of an exploitive economic system with eerie echoes to our own time, His Bloody Project is a gripping and relevant read.”
—Newsweek
“Burnet is a writer of great skill and authority… few readers will be able to put down His Bloody Project as it speeds towards a surprising (and ultimately puzzling) conclusion.”
—Financial Times
“His Bloody Project is an ingenious, artful tale of a 19th century triple murder in the Scottish Highlands. Though a novel—and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize—it masquerades as the tale of a true crime, made up of a collection of historical documents supposedly unearthed by the writer, each bit shedding further light on what drove a 17-year-old to kill three people—including an infant—in his small crofting community.”
—NPR
"A stellar crime novel and a wrenching historical portrait, His Bloody Project also succeeds at lyrically questioning whether it's possible to know another man's mind—or even desirable. The novel sends out vines in all directions, its characters' tangled motives obscured by tragedy and lies.”
—Lyndsay Faye, author of Gods of Gotham
“A thriller with a fine literary pedigree... His Bloody Project offers an intricate, interactive puzzle, a crime novel written, excuse my British, bloody well.”
—Steph Cha, Los Angeles Times
“[His Bloody Project] had such an engrossing plot that I couldn’t put it down once I started reading it, so it was no surprise that Graeme Macrae Burnet’s excellent work was short listed for the Man Booker Prize... The interesting and innovative structure used by the author, where you feel like you are reading original historical records, sets the book apart from others of a similar genre and his skillful writing means the reader can’t help but empathise with the ‘murderer’. In addition to the gripping story, the book gives the reader a fascinating insight into Highland life at the time — its harshness, poverty and brutality. Definitely one of the best books this year.“
—First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon
"Psychologically astute and convincingly grounded in its environment… a fine achievement.”
—The National
"Thought-provoking fiction."
—The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
“Fiendishly readable... A psychological thriller masquerading as a slice of true crime… The book is also a blackly funny investigation into madness and motivation.”—The Guardian
“I disappeared inside the pages of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project... fascinating.”
—The Seattle Times
“Burnet has created an eloquent character who will stick with you long after the book is read.”
—The Seattle Review of Books
“A masterful psychological thriller.”
—Ian Stephen, author of A Book of Death and Fish
“Masterful, clever and playful... one of the most experimental and assured authors currently writing in Scotland”
—Louise Hutcheson, A Novel Bookblog
“One of the most enjoyable and involving novels you’ll read this year”
—Alistair Braidwood, cots Wha Hae
“A gripping crime story, a deeply imagined historical novel, and gloriously written — all in one tour-de-force of a book. Stevensonian — that’s the highest praise I can give.”
—Chris Dolan, Sunday Herald, Books of the Year
*** Praise for Skyhorse Publishing ***
“I can’t begin to tell you how gratifying it is to have such enthusiasm and great support from everyone at Skyhorse.”
–Terry Goodkind, New York Times bestselling author
“From the get-go, the Skyhorse editorial, marketing and sales, and publicity team championed my novel, The Promise. Two years after the first publication, the team continues to push the book with the same heartfelt and determined enthusiasm.”
–Ann Weisgarber, author
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Skyhorse; First Edition (October 18, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 300 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1510719210
- ISBN-13 : 978-1510719217
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,174,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,859 in Historical Thrillers (Books)
- #15,574 in Murder Thrillers
- #51,611 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Graeme Macrae Burnet is the author of the 'fiendishly readable' His Bloody Project, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Awards. It won the Saltire Prize for Fiction and has been published to great acclaim in twenty languages around the world.
His 2021 novel Case Study was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Ned Kelly International Crime Prize and Gordon Burn Prize. Hannah Kent (Burial Rites) called it 'a novel of mind-bending brilliance.'
He is also the author of a trilogy of novels set in the small French town of Saint-Louis and featuring detective Georges Gorski: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014) and The Accident on the A35 (2017) and A Case of Matricide (October 2024).
"If Roland Barthes had written a detective novel, this would be it," was the Literary Review's verdict on The Accident on the A35
Born and brought up in Kilmarnock in the west of Scotland, Graeme now lives in Glasgow.
You can find him on twitter at @GMacraeBurnet.
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The facts of the case are clear. Why Roddy would commit this heinous act is obvious to the reader, but the question that demands an answer is how did a young boy with so much potential come to this end?
There could be hours of discussion in classrooms or book clubs about this case. It is a tragedy on so many levels. There is right and there is wrong. There is nature and there is nurture. When it is all said and done, a clear conscience at the end of the day becomes more of an aspiration than hard reality. Five stars and a great book cover.
little about my grandfather, Donald 'Tramp' Macrae, who was
born in 1890 in Applecross, two or three miles north of Culduie.
It was in the course of my research at the Highland Archive
Centre in Inverness that I came across some newspaper clippings
describing the trial of Roderick Macrae, and with the assistance
of Anne O'Hanlon, the archivist there, discovered the manuscript
which comprises the largest part of this volume.
Immediately upon finishing this latest Man Booker nominee, I turned back to the author's introduction to check whether I had been reading genuine documents about a true case, or the imaginative products of a clever author with an uncanny sense of style. I think the latter, but even now I cannot be quite sure. The larger part of this book is, as Macrae Burnet tells us, the memoir written in 1869 by 17-year-old Roderick John Macrae at the request of his solicitor while he is awaiting trial in Inverness Castle. He freely admits to killing Lachlan Mackenzie (commonly known as Lachlan Broad) and two other people in the former's house in Culduie, Wester Ross, in order to relieve his father of the persecution he was suffering at Mackenzie's hands. From beginning to end of the book, there is no dispute about these facts; all that remains to be filled in are the details, motivation, and the question of moral guilt.
Roddy Macrae's memoir takes up the first half of the book. It is preceded by various written statements made at the time by neighbors, the local schoolteacher, and the Presbyterian minister, which show a wide variety of opinions, revealing the character of each writer quite as much as that of their subject. It is an extraordinarily compact way of depicting the small crofting community, the various rivalries within it, and the constricting power of the Kirk. The latter part of the book consists of reports of the trial and its aftermath. Burnet is pitch-perfect in capturing the tone of depositions, official documents, and newspaper reports, but nothing is astounding as Roddy's narrative itself, which not only nails the style of 19th-century Scots prose* (think Stevenson) but also recreates the social and moral world in which the tragedy plays itself out.
Culduie is a real place, on the west coast of Scotland a little bit north of the Isle of Skye. Beautiful though it seems to tourist eyes, in the 19th-century it must have been a place of feudal squalor. Here and elsewhere, huge swaths of coast and mountain would be owned by a Laird, and used largely for the purpose of hunting and fishing. The lands would be managed by a Factor, who would assign local jurisdiction to a Constable elected from each area. The crofters lived in little more than hovels, occupying their houses and farming their land at the pleasure of the Laird, and subject to arbitrary rulings on the part of the Constable. Reading this portion of the book made me very angry indeed, not only at the grossly unfair exercise of class privilege, but at the bovine acceptance of it by most of the local people. Here is a snatch of conversation overheard by Roddy at the annual Highland Gathering:
I fell in behind two well-dressed gentlemen and eavesdropped on
their conversation. The first declared in a loud voice, 'It is
easy to forget that such primitives still exist in our country.'
His companion nodded solemnly and wondered aloud whether more
might be done for us. The first gentleman then expressed the
view that it was difficult to assist people who were so incapable
of doing anything for themselves. They then paused to drink from
a flask and watch a knot of girls pass by.
This attitude is echoed by that of the Presbyterian Minister, Mr. Galbraith, who speaks of "a savagism" that the Church has only been partially successful in suppressing. He has no difficulty in asserting that Roddy is a throwback to the primitive type, a noxious individual, enslaved to the Devil. Burnet may have used Galbraith as a scathing example of religion at its worst and least compassionate (he based him, apparently, on a real figure), but there is another aspect to his Presbyterianism that is not much developed in the novel, but which I see as centrally important. The willingness of Roddy's father and his sister Jetta to submit to Lachlan Broad's tyranny is the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination in its crudest form:
You must not say such things, Roddy. If you understood more about
the world, your would see that Lachlan Broad is not responsible.
It is providence that has brought us to this point. It is no more
Lachlan Broad's doing than yours or mine or Father's.
Jetta, who has second sight, tells him that she has foreseen Lachlan's death. The combination of Gaelic superstition and Presbyterian fatalism finally propels Roddy to his act. So we see two theories of his crime: class and religion. The trial, however, will focus on the question of mental confidence. But here we discover something else: that Roddy is not the trustworthy narrator we had thought.** All along, we have been proceeding towards understanding and even sympathy—but then something happens to kick us in the gut. From this horrendous point on, halfway through the book, neither Roddy nor the author is any more to be trusted. The novel becomes a genuine cliffhanger, even as it sinks deeper into tragedy. It is really a superb achievement.
======
*
Also as in Stevenson, the text is scattered with dialect Scots words—including the two murder weapons, a croman and a flaughter. Oddly enough, Burnet places his glossary halfway through the book (54% in my Kindle edition). Sassenach readers would be well advised to bookmark it!
**
In terms of the combination of unreliable narrator with a 19th-century Scottish crime drama, I thought of the novels of Jane Harris, GILLESPIE AND I and THE OBSERVATIONS. Reviews have also compared HIS BLOODY PROJECT to books such as Margaret Atwood's ALIAS GRACE and James Robertson's TESTAMENT OF GIDEON MACK. I am sure many other comparisons are possible. But that does not lessen the stunning originality of the book we have.
The author's approach to having several voices writing views of the murders around which the stories turn is quite clever. It lets us experience the personality - the interiority - of the person giving the view and a way of assesing the validity of their view - the biasis a mindset brings. That is we are not sure of the order of the murders or of the reason for the carnage - which might be the case for all murders where detectives scope out an order of events and trace a probable phschological motive.
I appreciated the subtle metaphors in the youth's acrions to saver other creatures. Watch for them.
I found it a bit difficult to place this story in the 1860's. I see the author needed this date to place the noted psychologist - and psychology - and also trains and the jurispudence system into fixed matters in his story. However, the stern nature of the Presbyterian religion and the base nature of the crofter's lives to me is 40 to 50 years out and more accurate to late 18th century and before the removal of crofters from the lands to be replaced by sheep. Well, that my assumption of life at that time in Scotland based on my study of lives in the 19th century in South East England. Maybe the English had it better at that point in time.
The novel was unique, compelling, and darkly fascinating. But it intentionally left several holes and kept details hidden from the readers. Certain events were also skimmed over by all the characters, which was frustrating to me. The ending is also ambiguous, reminding us that no one ever really knows the truth. I was fascinated by our unreliable narrator and haven't been able to stop puzzling over this book. But the lack of emotion, clarity and details prevent this from being a 5 star read for me.
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Once the confessed murderer is arrested and jailed his lawyer does what every lawyer does today, he gives Roddy the best legal defense he can offer. The trial is also presented as coming from newspapers of the day and a report of the trail supposedly published in 1869. The narration of the trial is as good as any modern legal thriller with expert witnesses, biased and unbiased witnesses and some who seem to just insert themselves into the drama. Think of any trial you may have heard about on Court T.V.
The ending does come with a verdict which I will not report here but with which you may or may not agree. No matter what you believe you will be still thinking about this book for days after you have read the last page.
I am in total agreement that this book deserved to be a finalist on the Man Booker Literary Prize list. Best book I've read in 2017 so far.
The novel is presented as if it were a true crime book with witness statements, medical examiner reports and so on. The first half is taken up with Roderick's own account of events leading up to the crime, an account he is writing while in jail, at the urging of Mr Sinclair, his defence attorney. There's then a shorter section told from the viewpoint of J. Bruce Thomson, an authority in the new discipline of criminal anthropology. He has been brought in by Mr Sinclair to determine whether Roderick could be considered insane under the legal definition of that word then in force. J. Bruce Thomson was a real person, as the notes at the end of the book tell us, and Burnet has apparently used his actual writings on the subject to inform this section of the book. Finally, there's an account of the trial, presented as a kind of compilation of various newspaper reports.
The quality of the writing is excellent and the structure works surprisingly well. I'll get my major criticism out of the way first: I found it impossible to believe that a 17-year-old crofter living in a tiny, isolated and dirt-poor community in the Scottish highlands at this period could possibly be as literate and eloquent as Roderick is in his own written account. Apart from just the excellent grammar and extensive vocabulary, he writes in standard English throughout, which would absolutely not have been how he spoke. Burnet is clearly aware of this problem, so shoves in a bit about how Roderick was a kind of prodigy at school who could have gone on to further education if circumstances had allowed, but I'm afraid this wasn't enough to convince. My minor, related criticism is that this also means the book makes no attempt to reproduce Scottish dialect or speech patterns – a bonus, I imagine, for the non-Scots reader but a disappointment for this Scot.
However, the storytelling is first-rate and Burnet creates a completely convincing picture of crofting life at this period – a life of hard work and poverty, where the crofters' living was entirely dependant on the whim of the local laird. He shows the various powers who held sway over the crofters – the factor who was the laird's main representative, the constable, elected by the crofters to enforce a kind of discipline among them, and the minister of the harsh and unforgiving Scottish church. And he shows how easily these people could browbeat, bully and abuse those under their power, who had no rights to assert and no power to protest. The section supposedly written by J. Bruce Thomson gives a great insight into contemporary thinking on insanity, particularly as regards the effects of heredity and of in-breeding in these tiny communities.
The trial also feels authentic, especially the various extracts from newspapers which include word sketches of how the witnesses and the accused appeared to those in the courtroom. The reader has slightly more information than the jury, because we have had the opportunity to read Roderick's account. But when the jury retires to consider its verdict, the jurors and the reader are left debating the same question of criminality versus insanity, and Burnet has carefully balanced the picture so that it's not an easy question to answer.
I found it an absorbing read with a great marriage of interesting storyline and well presented research. As a character study, Roderick is fascinating – indeed, his whole family are. There are all kinds of hints of things that are never fully revealed or clarified, all of which add to the uncertainty of Roderick's motivation; and the structure allows us to see him both as he chooses to present himself and from the viewpoints of the many other people who come into contact with him. I felt Burnet got just about a perfect balance between letting us feel we knew Roderick and reminding us that we can never fully understand what's going on in someone else's head – lots of lovely ambiguity.
The book was shortlisted for the Booker and, to be honest, I can't quite see why. It's very well written and interesting and I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see it winning crime or historical fiction awards, but I don't feel it's particularly 'literary' or brings anything hugely original to the table. This is not to criticise the book – it's more a criticism of the Booker, which seems to have lost its way fairly dramatically over the last few years. Had Burnet taken that extra leap of courage to use at least some Scots rather than go for the easy (and more marketable) option of standard English throughout, then perhaps it would have taken it up that notch that would be needed to raise it from excellent to exceptional.
But excellent it is, and it would be unfair to rate it otherwise because it doesn't quite live up to the unrealistic expectations the Booker shortlisting has created. As a historical crime novel, then - highly recommended. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
Letztlich geht es um die Frage, was die Wahrheit ist und ob ein Prozess überhaupt dieser Wahrheit nahe kommen kann, wenn es sie denn geben sollte. Besonders ab dem ersten Drittel des Buches, als ich richtig in diese raue Welt eingetaucht war, entwickelte das Buche einen enormen Sog. Bis zum letzten Satz des Nachworts fand ich den Roman fesselnd! Die verschiedenen Perspektiven scheinen der Wahrheit immer an einer Stelle etwas hinzuzufügen und dafür an einer anderen Stelle etwas abzuknapsen, sodass man als Leser zunehmend verunsicherter wird. Letztlich bleibt die Erkenntnis, dass Roderick wohl nie ein echte Chance hatte, aber die Frage nach seiner Schuld ist trotz der erdrückenden Beweislage am Schluss genau so wenig klar zu beantworten wie zu Beginn des Romans.
Insgesamt ein außergewöhnliches Buch, das tiefgreifende Fragen nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit stellt. Sehr lesenswert!