Danya Kukafka
Hachette
Otago Daily Times, March 18th 2022
Ansel Packer, psychopath, murderer, and death row inmate, has a Theory: “If morality is determined by our choices, then we must also consider those universes in which we’ve made different ones…They prove that who I am – my goodness or my badness – it’s fluctuating.” The corollary is that killers are made, not born, an idea that Danya Kukafka explores in her challenging sophomore novel. The story details the final twelve hours of Ansel’s life as his hopes for recognition and exoneration fade and he comes to terms with who and what he is. But the heart of the story belongs to three women – the mother forced to abandon him a lifetime earlier, the sister of his murdered wife, and the detective who brought him to justice – whose lives intersect tragically with Ansel’s own. His fate is determined by their choices just as theirs are by his, and we are tempted to empathise with the condemned man (whose sections are written in the second person, unlike the close third person of the rest of the novel) even as he undermines his own case. Kukafka’s taut and careful plotting ensures we remain ambivalent until the very end
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