Review By Harsimran Kaur

There is life. There is death. In between lies the invidious animosities, the pleasurable betrayals, the implausible cacophony of shrieks & shrivels and the interminable prolificacies.

One mocks the other! The ‘other’ is ready with a facetious smirk. The improbable felicitation continues till life and death seem similar. To take someone’s life is like another death of conscious; if it is, then what leads to such imprudence?  Impulsion, I guess; something that did not fit right in the sequence of life, the mind left obscure, incoherently pulled off by dystopic renditions. And, one fine day, the death of the unconscious life may find us copiously creating a simulacrum of what has destroyed us. It could too become a reason for a hard-wired murder!

The stage is set on an Island in Greece where seven people land to play their directed roles.

Lana Farrar is a movie star admired and respected by many, and one such ardent fan is Elliot Chase. Her marriage with Jason is a spook in the wheel. Left embittered, she is still trying to find out if the pursuit to be happy is invidiously soporific. She often thinks about her son, Leo whom she wants to protect at any cost; is he being the pernickety potboiler?

The stage is also set for Kate Crosby who is a British Theatre actor. Lara and Kate are thick crust of layers wielding over each other sparking a catharsis of love & friendship.

Hatred, a well-lit emotion too finds a way in the otherwise unblemished horizon. ‘False ego’ enters the stage, and one is predisposed to think if it can devastate the very edifice of competitive spirit? What about bitterness; can it evoke a sense of deluge, nauseating enough for friendships to go hugger-mugger? Are these emotions enough for plummeting a life into endangered captivity?

Elliot Chase is next on the stage. He has a capricious mind bedeviled by a perilous childhood; the wounds still live an embittered life mocking the serenity life has to offer. He meets Lara, the actress that has been a delight to watch, now plays a phantasmagoria of a perfect union. He loves her! Her love is perfunctionary! He wants to be loved! She loves the idea of love but her second marriage to Jason has becomes a train colliding under the dark hole.

Could Elliot fit in the pompous and flummery fief?

Or, flounce will take over the mind to become a fait accompli? Will Elliot’s love for Lara turn out to be forbidding?

‘The Fury’ by Alex Michaelides is his third novel, and quite indiscernible as his first book, ‘The Silent Patient’. Here, the mind plays at every step; every action is pressed by a motive that is paradoxically in tune with what is felt impressionably. It is not captivating as his first novel but any murder mystery cannot go wrong; though the story turns out to be more of in a need to justify each character rather than creating a convincing plot.

Seven people on an island! One murder and one murderer! The story encapsulates the solipsism of the human mind prone to devious loneliness and unexpected seethe. It’s the very outburst of unhealed emotions that triggers the toxic viability of the mind to plot something heinous like a murder; the pain is then released in the crimson valley of usurped power.

Whose pain is it?

• Lana who lives under suspicion?
• Kate is about to lose both friendship and love. Is she the one planting the defunct roots?
• Elliot needs to be accepted in the ubiquitous world of judgments. Does he require a murder to prove himself?

The other four on the Island come under the roof of questioning; Jason to get over a major debt might be using his wealthy wife as a pawn; Niko, the caretaker, has all lustrous eyes on Lana and Leo is leaving no stone unturned to be the abominable son. The cook, Agathi sees the fury unfold in front of her.

So, who finally blows the coup de maître?

TAKE AWAY

Engrossing and toxic…