In the prologue, we fittingly get an overture; the author waxes lyrical about the magic of theatre, and we are told that once a year at the Southern Cross Theatre, an old “stage door man” called Walter converses with the ghost of an actress through a mirror, before a vision of her onstage death is re-enacted. At the end of the prologue, Walter discovers via email that the production in which the actress (Fawn) died, “When The Curtain Falls”, is to be revived at the Southern Cross, sixty-six years later. Concerned, he asks Fawn to “play nice”, as she is in the habit of haunting and causing trouble backstage at the best of times. Walter then finds out who is playing Fawn’s role, Eliza, and says aloud to himself that new actress Olive Green might be sorry she ever agreed to the role.
There are good points to the prologue-it’s the book’s highlight. There is an admirable attempt at tension, which is very hard to write, and the mystery is fairly intriguing. Carrie’s passion for the theatre and storytelling definitely comes through, and I felt genuine sadness when Walter was ashamed of how old he had grown while ghostly Fawn is forever youthful, feeling he’d failed her.
However, small, easily addressable issues with Carrie’s writing begin to show from the start. The most prevalent is that all of her character sound the same-in short, they sound like Carrie. I’ve found this with all of her books (admittedly I’ve not read the latest two, so she might have improved)-every character sounds like Carrie in a different wig. It’s as if every single character in Friends said “How you doing?”. Her style of speaking, which is lovely coming from her-an articulate, slightly old-fashioned manner with plenty of metaphors, similes, and anecdotes-does not sound natural coming from every single character, regardless of background, personality, gender, and situation. Admittedly, there is an attempt at writing a different pattern of speech later for Toby, the stunt co-ordinator-he says things like “dunnit” (doesn’t it) and “bitta” (bit of), but that’s as far as it goes-it feels a bit cheap and forced, almost as if Toby himself is faking an accent like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins. All the characters simply have the same patterns and style of speaking (Carrie’s style) and it gets quite draining.
The other issue I find in the book as a whole that starts in the prologue is the unnatural, over-explanation. What I mean by that is unnatural dialogue being shoehorned in for the benefit of the audience to explain what’s going on instead of letting the audience discover things for ourselves. It’s almost as if some characters turn to the camera, like The Office, and say “This is this thing. It happens because of this thing. Got that? Good.” An excellent example of this happens in the prologue. In the email, straight after we see the ghostly re-enaction of the play’s climax and Fawn’s death, we are told that yes indeed “When The Curtain Falls” played at the Southern Cross before, and yes indeed, there was an accident, you got that? There was absolutely no need for the explanation-any child could have figured out the connection. Carrie would have done much better to have provided a shorter email saying that the revival is happening, and to let Walter’s reaction speak for itself. I know books need a certain degree of exposition, but if Carrie’s books were a little more subtle, they would be a hundred times better. There are countless examples of this through the book, and it’s a shame, because they really break your immersion into the world of the story.
Just two more quick points before I move on-I wanted to mention Walter speaking aloud to himself at the end of the prologue when Olive Green is named for the first time. Obviously the writer wanted to get Olive introduced in a dramatic way, but Walter isn’t the only character to talk aloud to himself about Olive when alone, and it is so unnatural. It could easily have been presented as thoughts in their heads, but no, they talk aloud to no one for the benefit of an invisible audience, and it’s very jarring. If I knew them, I’d be concerned for their wellbeing.
Lastly, I wanted to mention the nouns. Carrie has a habit of naming her characters and places in her books sickly sweet names, which is her prerogative, but honestly the naming in this novel for some reason annoyed me more than the others. The Southern Cross Theatre?! I seriously invite you to google the names of London theatres now, and see that, if the Southern Cross was real, one of these things would not be like the others. The only way I can make it work logically is if Carrie had invented a fictional place in London called Southern Cross, and the theatre was named after the location, but I don’t think we ever get such an explanation. Especially as the theatre is specifically on Shaftsbury Avenue. I wondered if it might mean “cross” as an allusion to a headstone shaped like a cross, because the theatre is haunted? But that’s the best I can do. Additionally in the prologue, the production company putting on “When The Curtain Falls” is called “Toastie Productions”. Toastie Productions?! I know production companies be naming themselves dumb things, but the only explanation I can think of for this is that Carrie must have been eating a toastie at the time. Again, this is a constant through the novel.
