Hello Antiheroines! How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

Originally published April 29th 2022

Disclaimer: this book is not an instructional guide.
SPOILERS AHEAD. And I believe that this book is best read blind. Read at your peril.

From the millenial pink cover to the tongue-in-cheek title, I was pretty sure this book was well and truly up my street. But how, oh how, I underestimated it.
If you are looking for a romantic beach read with a neatly tied up and satisfying ending, well, run for the hills. This is not the book for you. If you like a book that just edges its way into indecency, join my club. This is worth your time.

Synopsis: Meet 28 year-old Grace Bernard, currently an inmate at the fictional Limehouse women's jail in England. She has murdered several members of her own family, the Artemis' (who also happen to be wealthy and well known enough that they get featured in newspapers and magazines) - and yet, as sods law would have it, she's locked up for a murder that she didn't commit. 

What can I say. Grace is a character. Within 5 pages you understand very quickly that she is a quick-witted, observant, born cynic. Although the circumstances are very different, as the story progressed I couldn't help but see a lot of Anna Delvey (or the public image of her, at least) in her - the unwavering sense of herself, the superiority, the absolute lack of remorse, the keen awareness of how others perceive her. Grace is aloof and sometimes cold, but still dips her toes into the well of humanity, even going so far as to have mercy on some of the lesser-sinners among her planned victims.

You couldn't call her a psychopath. It would never be anything that simple. 

'It's a particularly British thing to know exactly where someone falls in the class system, without a word being spoken, isn't it?'

One subject I wasn't expecting from How To Kill Your Family was the cutting observations on class and privilege, particularly that of the UK-centric and very white variety. I think a lot of us underestimate just how much our assigned 'classes' carve out certain routes for us throughout our lives - opening roads some ways, and shutting them down in others. The lions' share of this story is centred around the ever-widening chasm between the haves and have-nots. Although being born to a single mother who struggled to make ends meet and is later taken by cancer, Grace eventually finds herself funnelled through the liberally minded, well-meaning (but still class-blind) middle classes, as she watches the extremely wealthy, privileged, and ultimately oblivious Artemis clan (her paternal family) from afar. 

'Rich people see tax the way some people see climate change - it's a social justice issue worth taking to the streets for.'

If you don't already subscribe to the eat-the-rich, tax-the-rich-into-the-next-millienium school of thought as I do, then you probably will by the time you reach the last page of How To Kill Your Family. Money makes the world go around, and don't we know it. Grace isn't just a spur of the moment familicidal serial killer - she takes pains to turn the trappings of obscene wealth into creative, gruesome, and deliciously ironic modes of murder. Think smart home technology, invite-only sex-clubs, and influencer PR gifts.

'Grant me the confidence of a man who can go to a sex club with a spotty arse.'

Let me just remind you, in case you had forgotten - we aren't living in as much of a 'post feminist' society as we think. If we did, we wouldn't need this book to drown our sorrows in. The men in this book are painfully over-empowered caricatures and yet... they're so believable. They are horrible, the type that you can imagine staring at you on the tube late at night, that then call you a bitch for telling them to stop. Even the one that Grace likes the most, her close friend Jimmy (well, she likes him enough that she could see herself being with him, maybe, one day), is largely a self-absorbed twat.

And I would say the worst of all is the one we don't meet until the very final chapter, a secret half-brother, and yin to Grace's yang in a multitude of ways.
Unlike Grace, this surprise sibling has the privilege of money and an extended family, as well as the advantage of being (yawn) male. It is these three factors that enable him to interrupt us right as the end credits are getting ready to roll, ready to snatch the glory after watching the events unfold from afar. But this is what happens, isn't it? This is how it has always, and will always play out for women in the real world. The man with the money is king, and he believes himself entitled to it. In the mind of the man with the money, the world is a meritocracy and the rest of us just aren't working hard enough. It is a deeply unsatisfying ending to Graces story and yet, I can't see it feasibly ending any other way.

How To Kill Your Family is not an action-driven novel with structured, chronological development with each chapter, and descriptive language lending to epic world building. It's a dark and meandering diary of a young woman in London in the early 21st century, who happens to be unfolding a disturbing story in the background. It flits from one period in time to another, from one thought to another, from one carefully crafted and rationalised observation to another. We are thrown cynical examinations of Twitter users, Brexit voters, incels, the advancements of smart technology, middle-class university students, millennials, boomers, gen z's, to then be thrown into a short and sweet story about running your estranged grandparents off the road with huge car you borrowed from some guy you met on a plane. I found it dark and delicious, and in every way totally unsuitable for easily emasculated cis-men. And if that isn't a sign of a good book, I just don't know what is.