Conviction by Denise Mina
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Our stories weren't disguised curriculum vitae. We didn't tell them as a way of boasting or declaring our relative place in the social order. There was none of this crap. These were the stories to entertain, told for the shape of them, for the sake of them, for the love of a tale. It was all about the stories and the shape of the stories. Round ones, spirals, perfect arcs, a ninety-degree take-off with a four-bump landing [...]"

One of the most extraordinary books I have read in many years! Extraordinary not in the sense of uniformly excellent - oh no! Extraordinary as in "mostly a masterpiece, partly crap." (Sorry for the word, but it appears in the epigraph too.) I feel very strongly about the book and am unable to be balanced or dispassionate in this review.

I love Denise Mina's writing; she's one of my most favorite authors of all time. Having just finished reading her newest book - Conviction (2019) I love her work even more. To me one of the marks of great literature is that the writer does not pander to the public by giving them what they expect and want. Remember, it is the writer's art not the public's. When writers begins to cater to the public's wishes and reading habits they cease being artists and become craftsmen manufacturing replaceable items to order.

Conviction is totally unlike any previous novel by Ms. Mina (I have read them all). In the beginning I found it hard to believe she had written it and I was reading stunned and totally awed by a non-Mina (occasionally even anti-Mina) plot and prose.

A review requires at least a brief mention of the plot. Anna McDonald, a housewife, mother of two pre-teen girls, is married to a much older, successful lawyer. The author tells us that Anna has had a turbulent past and that McDonald is not her real name: I love it that we have to wait for the details until the midpoint of the book when we read:

"I have to explain who I am, where I come from, why I ran. [...] You will have been told this story before but only in one way and not in this way."

In the meantime, Anna, who is a fan of true-crime podcasts, is listening to the podcast Death and the Dana about a family dying in an explosion on a yacht named Dana, a famous and "cursed" boat. Anna realizes that she knows one of the victims. The Dana thread and Anna's past thread merge and the whole thing mutates into an insanely-paced thriller, which I find completely silly at the end. I am unable to treat the last part of the novel seriously - I think it is a parody or pastiche of popular thrillers, with all their clichés and idiocies.

Maybe I presume too much but I don't think that Ms. Mina wrote Conviction for the plot. Yes, a plot is needed to keep the readers reading, but here it serves just as a grounding for two powerful messages that the author conveys. One is about the art of storytelling. The stories are "told for the shape of them, for the sake of them, for the love of a tale." In this sense Conviction is really a metafictional novel. Ms. Mina is winking at us: I am feeding you crazy stories because I am writing about making crazy stories.

The other message is less veiled. The novel is a passionate and powerful critique of celebrity cult and the role that the so-called social media play in fostering the cult. The particular target is the "virality" of messages sent via, say, Instagram. The social media provide the global dish that feeds the viral information culture and kills the human culture.

I am also unable to refrain from quoting one of the funniest punch phrases I have ever read:

"For the rest of the journey, whenever there was a pause or the mood dipped, someone would repeat the punchline and everyone would laugh. This went on until the garroting in the toilet."

Four-and-a-half stars.

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