All these Perfect Strangers by Aoife Clifford

Posted by Rowena Holloway on March 9, 2016

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Deft characterisation and layered revelations make this disquieting novel difficult to put down.

About the Book

(from the publishers)

Your secrets define you, don’t let them kill you.

‘This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So let’s just call them deaths and say I was involved. This story could be told a hundred different ways.’

Within six months of Pen Sheppard starting university, three of her new friends are dead. Only Pen knows the reason why. College life had seemed like a wonderland of sex, drugs and maybe even love. Full of perfect strangers, it felt like the ideal place for Pen to shed the confines of her small home town and reinvent herself. But the darkness of her past clings tight, and when the killings begin and friendships are betrayed, Pen’s secrets are revealed. The consequences are deadly.

You don’t have to believe in ghosts for the dead to haunt you.
You don’t have to be a murderer to be guilty.

My Thoughts

Pen Sheppard has many secrets. One made her a pariah in her claustrophobic town yet provided her with the opportunity to escape the dysfunction of her family, but it’s what happens at university that could ultimately set her free or bind her to her past forever.

Pen is a survivor, or so she tells us, and as the layers of her story unfold we see both her naiveté and strength. Requested by her psychiatrist to keep a journal of what happened at university—of which we initially know only scant facts—Pen decides she won’t tell him everything and she underlines the passages she will read out to him during therapy. As a character Pen is at her best in those early scenes with the psychiatrist. She’s full of acerbic observations of those around her, a stark contrast to the observational passivity she displays as the drama unfolds at university.

The hints and clues about what made Pen and her friend Tracey outcasts in their small town when aged fifteen are cleverly done. It was my need to know where these clues were leading that drew me through the novel. The crimes-on-campus storyline has several threads and takes time to come together, which for me diluted the focus and flattened the pacing. Armchair sleuths may also find the ‘screwdriver man’ storyline easy to solve. For me the standout in this novel is the slow drip of what happened when Pen and Tracey were fifteen. When all was revealed this ripped me apart emotionally. Why didn’t she just speak up? Yet what Pen says, or doesn’t say, even to the reader she draws into her confidence, is at the heart of this novel. In the final scenes every story arc comes together and though Pen’s journey doesn’t have a definitive ending, there are enough clues to ensure lively book group discussions.

All These Perfect Strangers leads you through a faceted tale of how difficult it is to break away from your past, even when that past has been shaped by events (possibly) beyond your control. It’s for the reader to decide if Pen is a victim, a perpetrator or something far more complex. If you like characters with intricate psychology and a layered tale that keeps you guessing, you’ll enjoy All These Perfect Strangers.

Recommended

My copy courtesy of the publisher Simon and Schuster Australia

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About the Author

All These Perfect Strangers is Aoife Clifford’s debut novel, but she has won the two major Australian crime writing prizes in short story form and has been shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger. In 2013 she was awarded an Australian Society of Author’s mentorship for All These Perfect Strangers. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and three children.