​YOU LET ME IN BY CAMILLA BRUCE BOOK REVIEW

You Let Me In is a brilliant and sinister debut from Camilla Bruce that examines one woman’s perception of the truth as she grows up in a cruel and unhappy household.
 
The book starts in a straightforward enough manner with a newspaper article that details the disappearance of a notorious writer and alleged murderer, who is our narrator when she’s grown up. The article tantalises the reader with hints of past atrocities and family feuds.
 
After about two pages, the style switches again to a single page which declares itself to be “Instructions regarding the last will and testament of Cassandra Tipp.” The instructions are that her heirs (being her nephew Janus and her niece Penelope) are to wait for a year after any disappearance and then they must go to her house and read a manuscript that she’s left for them in her study. Within that manuscript will be hidden a codeword and if they take that codeword to her estate’s executive, he will give them their inheritance.
 
Chapter one, when it finally arrives, is just over four pages long and is written in 2nd person, with someone (assumed to be Cassandra) speaking about Janus and Penelope arriving at the house. It is styled as if she is talking to them directly.
 
This all seems a little odd until you get to chapter two where it is clear that the format of the book is going to be as if you’re reading the manuscript along with Penelope and Janus, and that Cassandra has written it to sound like she’s talking to her relatives directly rather than from the page.
 
If you’re one of those people who reads the first few pages of a book to decide if you like it, then it would be a disservice to this novel if you stopped anywhere before, say, chapter three. It takes a while for this book to get into its rhythm, but once the style settles down into something consistent, the tale really begins, and it’s not one you want to miss.
 
Cassandra Tipp is the narrator of this piece and the story deals with her life. She grew up with a mother who was always finding fault with her, a sister who seems perfect in every way, a brother who appears shy and mysterious, and a father who can best be described as somewhat distant and enigmatic.
 
Most of the tales about her childhood revolve around her turbulent relationship with her mother and her mostly jealous but sometimes caring relationship with her sister, Olivia.
 
The other constant in Cassandra’s life is Pepper-Man. Whether he’s a creation of her imagination or a real fairy creature is the central question around which the whole novel spins. There is evidence both ways. For example, her mother finds all the gifts that Pepper-Man leaves in Cassandra’s room when she’s a child, but there’s also the fact that the fairies vanish from Cassandra’s life when she takes the unspecified drugs that her counsellor, Dr. Martin, gives her.
 
Even if he’s real, his origins are a mystery. He himself gives Cassandra three different stories as to how he came to be with her: that he was floating down the river in an oak leaf when he saw her, that he had been a crow flying through the air looking for prey, or that he’d come across her when she’d just tripped over a fairy mound and felt sorry for her.
 
Pepper-Man’s relationship with Cassandra is a complex and unsettling one. He brings her gifts, seems to protect her, and doesn’t ever shout at her, but at the same time, he lives on her blood. When he embraces her, he invariably sinks his teeth into her flesh. It’s clear early on that she both loves him and fears him, and as the novel goes on, that darkly symbiotic relationship adapts as they both change but it remains constant in her life; you can’t help wondering if, blood-letting aside, it might not be the best relationship Cassandra has in her life.
 
Does Pepper-Man manipulate events to keep Cassandra on his side? Or is it just that the world is cruel and he can predict that cruelty more easily than she can? He seems at times deeply concerned for her wellbeing and yet he plays cruel tricks on those around her which often lead to her being in trouble, undermining his attempts to keep her safe. He is capricious and unpredictable and yet in a family that shuns here, even the little care that he shows her is more than she receives from anyone else.
 
Chapter nineteen has an exchange between Cassandra and her Pepper-Man where she challenges him about their relationship.

‘I give you life.’ I meant it as an accusation.
He chuckled beside me... ‘That you do, and what a fine source of life you are.’
‘You never asked me if it was all right.’
‘It is a natural thing to feed. You never asked your Sunday roast if it cared to be your meal.’
‘I thought you loved me,’ I said.
‘I do! I do! How can one not love blood as rich as yours? You have made me who I am and I am forever in your service.’
‘For a price.’
‘There is always a price. Anything worth having has a price.’
‘What is my price tag then?’ I asked. ‘What do I get in return for what I give you?’
‘I am your servant, bound by blood. Isn’t that enough?’
And it was, because it had to be. Without Pepper-Man, I was nothing, just a sad and angry girl. Without him, all I had was the white room and a family that loathed me. No magic, then, no crowns or twigs – no midnight flights to the otherworld.
 

This conversation highlights a state of mind that we can all relate to: in our bleakest, loneliest moments, we want to feel wanted, to be special, to escape our life. And if the price for that is a little blood, then where is the harm?
 
It’s always a joy to encounter something in a book that you don’t see coming. Some people might spot a twist a mile off while others blunder straight into the author’s trap and stand astounded. I was certainly in the latter camp when I got partway through the book and a word – just a single word, an adjective – turned everything that I’d just read upside down. You might see it coming, you might not, or when you finally get there, you might decide that the truth is exactly what you thought it was all along, or you could find that it was something else entirely.
 
Some might find the format of the novel a little jarring, as the narrative does jump around in time a bit. In addition, the chapters are usually quite short, often with an abrupt ending combined with a hint at what is to come, such as chapter four which ends with the standalone sentence of: We’ll get to the bodies eventually.
 
Personally, though, I found the short chapters really enhanced the idea that I was listening to someone speak. It was as though each chapter was a pause for breath, and the jumping around as well as the little bits of foreshadowing were just part of Cassandra being a natural storyteller and keeping her audience on their toes.
 
As noted above, the style is kind of epistolary with the narrative being framed as Cassandra writing a tale for her nephew and niece. In fact, it might be that the manuscript started at chapter one, and that everything described there was just part of Cassandra’s playful nature in describing to Janus and Penelope themselves exactly what they were doing as they approached her house. The beauty of that first chapter is that you don’t know – and that’s a theme that carries on throughout the novel, that uncertainty as to what is true and what is made up or assumed.
 
Because the story is written with the assumption that it’s Penelope and Janus reading it, the narrative deviates from Cassandra’s life story now and again to address comments to the two readers. I thought these asides were well-done and used sparingly, to good effect, so that they didn’t pull the reader out of the story too much. I particularly liked the section, about fifty pages from the end where Cassandra teases her readers:

I will give you a way out, Penelope and Janus, you can still walk away from this. You can abandon the story before it gets ugly. The password is THORN, yes THORN, like my maiden name. But then again, you don’t know that for sure. I can still change my mind on the next page. Maybe it isn’t THORN at all, but MARMALADE or SPARROW. But for now it is THORN.
You should probably read on. ​

The title of this book is perfectly chosen since even those four words deal with the issue of blame: whatever happened, it’s because you let me in. It’s a question that goes hand in hand with the central concept of this novel: what is true and what is imagined? And who is responsible for whichever truth you choose? Even if you agree that Cassandra’s mother at fault, does her fault lie in the fact that she forced Cassandra into Pepper-Man’s arms because she cared for her so little, or was it because she saw Pepper-Man for what he was and turned a blind eye?
 
There is no way to tell which of the various versions of events given in You Let Me In is the truthful retelling. And, by the end, it seems that what is true doesn’t really matter. As Cassandra herself says to her brother: People, faeries – we all have to live. It’s a predatory world out there. We all eat something, don’t we?
 
At its conclusion, this book is about one woman’s struggle to live with what life has given her, to find joy amid the sadness of a neglectful and cruel family, and to spend her years with as much happiness as she could, letting go of the hurt even when others wouldn’t.
 
This is a book that constantly changes, forever challenges you and will leave you battered, bruised, and unsure of reality by the time you reach the last page. I highly recommend it.
​

You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce

'By the end of the third page I was not only hooked, but beginning to think that this might be the best book I'd read all year.' Joanne Harris

'I wanted someone to know, you see. To know my truth, now that I am gone. How everything and none of it happened.'
Everyone knew bestselling novelist Cassandra Tipp had twice got away with murder.
Even her family were convinced of her guilt.
So when she disappears, leaving only a long letter behind, they can but suspect that her conscience finally killed her.
But the letter is not what anyone expected. It tells two chilling, darkly disturbing stories. One is a story of bloody nights and magical gifts, of children lost to the woods, of husbands made from twigs and leaves and feathers and bones . . .
The other is the story of a little girl who was cruelly treated and grew up crooked in the shadows . . .
But which story is true? And where is Cassie now?

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