Our Kind of Cruelty (Hall) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A] searing, chilling sliver of perfection about a toxic relationship that may or may not be finished…To a degree that's astonishing, this genre is still picking itself up from Gillian Flynn's brilliant and monumentally crucial Gone Girl, which retaught readers to doubt everything. That doubt lingers all the way through the stunning final pages of Our Kind of Cruelty, which may well turn out to be the year's best thriller.
Charles Finch - New York Times Book Review


A seriously twisted story of obsessive attachment.… If you like sustained discomfort you'll love this one.
Sarah Murdoch - Toronto Star


[A] fiendishly clever psychological thriller.… Hall forces her readers to consider their attitudes to the sexes.
Alison Flood - Guardian (UK)


In Hall’s impressive novel, sexual role-playing games have dangerous undercurrents.… While the orchestration of suspense is masterly, Hall’s real agenda becomes apparent in a feminist subtext: the way in which female desire is judged more harshly in modern society.
Barry Forshaw - Financial Times (UK)


A story of obsession and self delusion, as well as the pain that intense passion can bring, it is disturbing and thrilling.
Daily Mail (UK)


Thrilling.… The reader will wrangle over what's real and what's imagined. As a courtroom drama unfurls, readers may be left wondering if their interpretation of events is due to their own biases.
Irish News (UK)


One of the most unsettling books I have read in a while but brilliant.… Obsessive love has never been written so frighteningly.
Women's Day


[A] disturbing psychological thriller.…Readers never learn enough about V and arguably a lot more than they might wish about a narrator whose head is an uncomfortably creepy place to be. Still, Hall is a writer to watch.
Publishers Weekly


[A] slow-burn, sinister psychological thriller.… Hall’s depiction of stalker mentality and behavior is chilling. Perhaps most interesting is the examination of gender politics and how women are punished for sexual behavior in ways that men are not.
Library Journal


Hall brings the unreliable narrator to new heights in this disturbing narrative.… For fans of Nabokov’s Lolita [and] Highsmith’s Ripley tales.
Booklist


Here's a change—a psychological thriller in which a man is the crazy one.… Which is worse—an emotionally disturbed murderer or a woman with a fierce libido? Hall's U.S. debut is designed to show just how much trouble society has answering that question.
Kirkus Reviews