By Jessie Tu
FICTION
Love Letters to a Serial Killer
Tasha Coryell
Orion, $32.99
“I didn’t plan to fall in love with an accused serial killer,” cries the protagonist of Tasha Coryell’s debut novel, Love Letters to a Serial Killer. Does anyone?
“Historically, knowing a man is only ever a detriment to a woman’s safety,” Hannah tells us. “Every story about a man and a woman has the potential of ending in death, no matter how innocuous the beginning.”
What Coryell gets right in this book about a young romantic writing love letters to a man on trial for a series of femicides is the balance of absurdity and truth. We live in a world where a woman can have her life taken by a man she once thought of romantically, but it is a world in which some women are sexually aroused by men capable of such violence.
Tasha Coryell is interested in the women who project their vision of the perfect male partner onto violent men.Credit: Emily Covington
Coryell isn’t interested in adjudicating the ethics of the men’s actions – objectively and morally wrong – but in the women who project their vision of the perfect male partner onto these men. Hannah isn’t a monster for wanting to pursue a romance with William Thompson, who is on trial for murdering four women within a few weeks in Minneapolis. She’s desperate for attention after suffering a lifetime of being under-appreciated by mediocre men, struggling to find herself worthy of anything rewarding.
She’s susceptible to flattery, and no longer knows how to love a man without giving up at least one of her basic needs. She’s me. She’s you. She’s every woman I know.
There’s an allure in writing to a man locked up in jail. Hannah feels safe letting William know how she feels. The letters begin as a call for attention, but then become confessions. Pretty soon, they’re exchanging their hopes, fears, dreams. William is sweeter and more attentive than any man Hannah has ever dated. Hannah discovers a man could be perfect, but only if disembodied.
When Hannah loses her best friend to a male lover, her friend warns her: “Don’t become one of those women.”
It’s too late — Hannah drives 17 hours to watch his trial; here, she finds other fangirls who have projected their own versions of the perfect man onto William. She becomes friends with these fellow obsessives, experiencing a kinship she has long missed.
On the first day of the trial, Hannah wears a red dress. She continues to write to William, even as he stands trial: “There was something romantic about writing to someone who was in the same room as me, yet not allowed to speak”. She feels safe, especially in this state of close longing.
When I started reading this novel, I questioned whether a story that involves the murder of women could be entertaining — funny, even. But Coryell hasn’t set out to write about violence perpetrated by men against women. She has set out to write a book about what it means to be a woman. And her answer is delivered in pulsing prose. Hannah’s voice is disquietingly near my own, her actions not entirely unrelateable.
She throws herself swiftly from one lover to the next, collecting rejections from unviable men who promise nothing but heartache. Which of us hasn’t?
What does it mean to be a woman? It means being overly generous and sympathetic and completely forgiving of said men. It means being detrimentally charitable when charity is the last thing these men deserve.
Jessie Tu’s second novel, The Honeyeater, is published by Allen & Unwin.
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