The Book that Launched Ruth Ware: In a Dark, Dark Wood

 

 

 

 

IN A DARK, DARK WOOD (2015)

By Ruth Ware

Scout Press, 308 pages.

★★★★

 

Ruth Ware is among that small elite whose novels are declared “instant classics” and leaps onto lists of “best sellers” before they are actually released. She wasn’t always thus. Her first five books were young-adult fantasies about witches written under her full name, Ruth Warburton. Then she wrote In a Dark, Dark Wood and her career skyrocketed. Since she published it in 2015, NPR declared it the year’s best novel. It was optioned for both a movie and TV, though I don’t think the film was ever made. Nonetheless, Dark, Dark Wood made Ware a publisher’s dream: a writer whose books sell. She has written a book a year since 2015, an output upon which I will comment, but first let’s take a trip to the woods.

 

I read In a Dark, Dark Wood when it first came out and thought it a good thriller. That genre of novel seldom gets excessive praise from readers who claim they like “literature,” meaning thick classic literary works (usually English or Irish). They get reprinted by Penguin, usually in mouse type. I’ll bet, though, that many literary snobs secretly read Ruth Ware. Hers are heart-thumping reads that give you a bigger scare than most blood-gushing horror tales.

 

The main character is Leonora Shaw, a successful crime fiction writer living in London. It has been 10 years since college graduation, and she has been partnerless since her breakup with James Cooper at school. “Nora” enjoys city life, running, and solitude when she’s writing. To her surprise she gets an email asking if she’s like to attend a “hen” (bachelorette) party for Clare. Who? Sure enough, it’s little Ms Perfect–Clare Cavendish, a person she envied and sometimes hung out with in college. But the email is from “Flo,” who claims to be her best friend, though “Nora” (she was known as Lee or Leo in college) has never heard of Flo. The only friend from college Nora is still in touch with is Nina, now a doctor. They make a mutual pact to go, even though the party is at Flo’s aunt’s home in the Kielder Forest section of Northumberland. For two Londoners, that’s akin to asking them to vacation in Siberia. But at least Nina has a car; Nora doesn’t know how to drive.  

 

The home is actually very nice if you can picture an English version of colonial revival furnishing. Nora, who everyone calls “Lee,” though she corrects them, immediately wants to flee. It’s freezing cold along the Scottish Borderlands and creepy deep in the woods. To make matters worse, there is shaky Wi-Fi and the land line is unreliable. Just six people show up: Flo, Nora, Nina, Melanie (who has a six-month-old baby that she regrets leaving), and eventually Clare and Tom, a gay actor, who knows Clare from a fundraiser and the still-unknown bridegroom whom Tom knows from the theatre. Flo acts the role of the sheepdog who rounds up everyone for the kind of games and ice breakers that you’ve grown to hate since you were no longer 14. She has quiz and game challenges, a Ouija board, and even takes them skeet shooting (to Clare’s horror!). Even creepier, her outfits echo Clare’s as do many of her mannerisms. Nora runs in the forest, which empties out to the main road, and spends time with Nina complaining of her feelings of creepiness. An old gun said to be filled with blanks hangs about the mantlepiece–can you say Chekov’s gun–that Flo’s aunt uses to scare rabbits from the garden.

 

Strange things go bump in the night, unknown footprints in the snow, a banging open back door in the middle of the night, a Ouija board message, five frightened guests (Melanie bailed that morning), a gunshot, panic, and Clare’s full-speed sprint through the woods and brambles. When she comes to, she’s in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. When interviewed by the police she realizes that she’s a possible murder suspect. Who? How? Say what?

 

Again, this book was a massive hit for Ruth Ware and threw her into the book-a-year routine. If there’s anything popular culture demands, it’s milking a franchise until it’s spitting up blood. Ware is the mistress of novels about women feeling trapped, anxiety, gaslighting, and murder. To her credit, she changes settings and circumstances, though the loner woman is a repeated theme. Laura “Lo” Blackstock plays that role in The Woman in Cabin 11 (2016) and its (semi-) sequel The Woman in Suite 12 (2025), though the first was at sea and the latter in a blizzard-isolated Swiss luxury hotel. There is generally a reason why the protagonist can’t flee from danger: old and new lies that must be resolved –The Lying Game (2017), The Death of Mrs. Westaway (2018), The It Girl (2022)– or an entrapping remote location– the Scottish Highlands in Turn of the Key (2019), the French Alps in One by One (2020), an island cut off by a storm in One Perfect Couple (2024)…. As you can no doubt infer from titles, she often reworks or updates Agatha Christe novels. There are also traces of Daphne du Maurier.

 

But here’s the thing. I’ve read every one of Ware’s post-witch novels except Zero Days. Who can resist a TV reality show that turns into a deadly high-stake episode of Survivor (One Perfect Couple). Call her work formulaic–aren’t most novels? –but Ruth Ware knows her audience.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Sing Sing Humanizes the Incarcerated

 

  

SING SING (2024)

Directed by Greg Kwedar

A24, 107 minutes, R (language)

★★★★ ½

 

Sing Sing is one of the most infamous prisons in the United States. Located in Ossining, New York, it was once home to “Old Sparky” (electric chair), which dispatched 614 convicted criminals to the hereafter between 1891-1963.* Yet, it has also been the home to innovative programs such as a theatre project known as Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which is the subject of this very fine and moving film. Director Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley wrote the screenplay with assistance from (among others) Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin and John “Divine G” Whitfield who were once inmates in Sing Sing and veterans of the RTA. Nine other actors also served time in Sing Sing.

On screen, we quickly learn that Divine G (Colman Domingo) is the star playwright, lead actor, and leading spirit of the RTA. The group has just finished a Shakespeare play under the direction of Brent Buell (Paul Raci). The group can’t decide on a new play, so G is tasked with writing a new one. He also tries to recruit Divine Eye (Maclin playing himself) into the RTA. To say Eye has attitude is an understatement. He’s innately intelligent but inside the joint he’s a don’t-mess-with-me loner and tough guy. He says he wants nothing to do with RTA but G knows a phony when he sees one. G discusses matters with his cellmate “Mike Mike” (Sean San Jose) and follows his advice to challenge Divine Eye. He does and Eye shows up as the group discusses what G should write. Eye is all bad news, but it is he who suggests a comedy.

A comedy indeed. How do you feel about some of the greatest stage soliloquies stitched together in a comedic romp? How will G react to Brent’s decision to cast Eye in the play’s only dramatic role? G is shaken, but he reluctantly becomes Eye’s tutor. To simplify a whole lot of moving story development, the two also become friends, especially after Mike Mike dies of an aneurysm. Can you say “a star is born behind bars?” G will also tutor Eye in writing his clemency appeal and about losing the chip on his shoulder. But, like many of us, G is smarter in giving advice than in assessing his own situation.

G is also up for clemency and despite glowing recommendations from prison staff and administrators, makes two fatal mistakes. First, he insists that another person did the crime for which he has been incarcerated. Second, he takes credit for the RTA in a prideful way. The lead commissioner of the clemency board (Sharon Washington) asks him if he thinks he is a good actor, G says he’s learned a lot about acting from Brent and the RTA. Her next question is, “Are you acting now?” G is stunned and instantly aware that he has screwed up. It’s a clemency hearing after all, meaning an appeal for forgiveness. Sure enough, his request is denied. It stings even more when Divine Eye’s appeal is granted and he is released.

G is hurt and reacts like Eye might have. In the following weeks he says the RTA is BS, swears, rips up his cell, tries to provoke Eye, gets tossed into solitary, and isolates himself when he’s out. But RTA is in his soul; he apologizes and resumes RTA duties. When he is paroled seven years later, guess who greets him on the outside.

Cinematographer Pat Scola is an unsung hero in making Sing Sing., which garnered praise in festivals and independent cinemas. Colman got a Best Actor nomination and Maclin a Best Supporting Actor nod. Neither won, but merely getting nominated is pretty amazing for a film made for less than $2 million and featuring former prisoners. Scola’s camera humanizes the men inside the “joint” and lingers on how relationships are built under stressful and depressing situations. Scola and Kwedar also had the good luck to get inside the Downstate Correctional Facility** months after it was decommissioned. Sing Sing does appear in the film, but only its exteriors as it still houses nearly 1,600 prisoners. Downstate looked and felt like the inside of a real medium/maximum prison, complete with cellblocks, heavily screened views of life outside, and drab interiors.*** Scola’s use of 16 mm filmstock gives the film a gritty, grainy look.

I highly recommend this film, as it’s truly a superior effort. My only beef is that mixing professional actors with ex-cons often makes interactions too polite, a veritable Hawthorne effect.

 

Rob Weir

* New York abolished its death penalty.

** If you driven west on I-84, the razor-wired Downstate facility is on your right. It was closed in 2002. On your left you will see the older Fishkill Correctional Facility, which still jails medium- and maximum-security prisoners because it’s larger.

*** I know something about the inside of prisons as I once worked in probation/parole services.