For this review, I’ve decided to break one of my cardinal rules as a reviewer. Rule: If I don’t finish a book, I don’t review it. I do this for a few reasons, chiefly, I don’t feel like I can give a good opinion on a book I couldn’t finish. And I know how hard authors work to create a book; so, I don’t want to disparage that. While reading is declining in the U.S., there is a large enough audience that a lot of people will like the thing I don’t. So, I don’t want to judge a book that people like simply because it bounced off of me. When I don’t like a book, I believe the problem is me. Therefore, I don’t write a review if the problem is me. However, this time, I didn’t finish the book and I believe the problem is me, but I’m going to review it anyway because I liked the small amount that I read. Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling is a book that I will have to try again at a different time. To be up front, I only finished 28% of the novel. In that portion, I found an exquisitely crafted book with timely things to say about corporate science and research. But I just didn’t connect to the story for some reason. It’s a book that I enjoyed but don’t feel a need to pick up again. This makes me feel terrible because I know this is a good book. As such, I plan to return to it at a different time for a new attempt.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.
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TL;DR
Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling is an exquisitely crafted book with big things to say about science that I just could not get into. If you like slow build horror, this might be the book for you.
From the Publisher
Last to Leave the Room is a new novel of genre-busting speculative horror from Caitlin Starling, the acclaimed author of The Death of Jane Lawrence.
The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster.
As Tamsin becomes obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before – and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world.
With her employer growing increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads…
Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling
Dr. Tamsin Rivers is not a good person. She’s the head of a lab investigating, what seems like a new type of communication. Her experiments take place underground at various points around the city of San Siroco, and it appears that these experiments are causing the city to sink in an unusual way. Rivers set up a lab in her basement to measure the sinking that’s occurring within her own home. The house isn’t sinking, but her basement is stretching. The main floor hasn’t lowered, but the basement floor is much lower. Soon, a door appears, and with its appearance, Dr. River’s behavior becomes increasingly more erratic. She becomes obsessed with the door, and one night, the door opens and someone steps through. It’s her. As far as she can tell, an exact copy.
Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling is a third person novel that follows Dr. River’s as her life seems to unravel because of her scientific discoveries. It’s a slow book, too slow for me, that is exquisitely crafted.
Dr. Rivers
Tamsin is a character that I should be interested in. She’s a high powered, type A personality scientist who chose the corporate grind over academia. All of that rings my bell. She’s chosen her career over any semblance of a personal life, and she’s ruthless in her ambition. She typifies everything that’s wrong with corporate science. Despite all that, I couldn’t find anything that allowed me to connect with her. She has a cat; that’s about as close as I got, and I’m not sure what I missed.
Starling crafted a fine main character. Rivers balances on a knife edge between confidence and self-doubt. She questions the motives of her superiors and wonders if her job is in jeopardy. Starling keeps the reader close to Rivers point of view, and she constructs a believable yet unlikable person. It’s masterful writing. Yet I still felt distant from Rivers. I was cold toward her.
Themes
Starling deals with some weighty themes in the portion that I read, and, again, these themes are right up my alley. Through Tamsin’s employer, she’s describes a corporation who acts selfishly but uses its public relations to act like it’s acting charitably. Tamsin’s employer renovating the failing subway system of San Siroco and enjoys all the good press and public goodwill from it. However, that’s just a cover so that they can conduct their experiments underground. It’s a perfect example of how corporations work. They spin their acts as charitable, as being good members of the community; yet we all know that corporations only do what benefits them. If a charitable act does not benefit the corporation, it will not perform that act.
In addition, Tamsin’s experiments are causing an ecological and societal disaster. Yet she and the corporation continue to pursue the experiments. Because who cares if we destroy where we live, right? In addition to a commentary on climate change, this also acts as a commentary on science itself. Too often – and especially in light of the science deniers from Covid – people look to the scientific process for the only answers. In truth, science is part of the answer. The pursuit of science simply for itself can lead to horrors. There are examples of this throughout history (see the Tuskegee experiments). Humanity is the end; science is the tool. When we treat humans as a means to a scientific end, horror follows. Rivers and her company are doing this in Last to Leave the Room. They’re placing innocent people at risk to further their own agendas.
Pacing
While this is an exquisitely crafted book, the pacing was too slow for me. Starling takes us through River’s life in detail, and she builds a picture of a character ripe for a decline. It was at about 20% of the way through the book that the doppelganger shows up. Starling takes us through the various experiments that River’s performs on her in more detail than I needed.
For some, this buildup will have been tense and delicious. If you enjoy the sweet torture of delayed gratification, this book might be for you.
Conclusion
Caitlin Starling’s Last to Leave the Room is an exquisitely crafted book that I couldn’t connect with. I plan to revisit this book at a different time to see if it’s just me that’s the problem. I found the writing to be top notch with excellent crafting. Starling’s main character is well drawn. This is a book with a lot of interesting things to say, and if you like slow build up horror, this is the book for you.
Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling is available from St. Martin’s Press on October 10th, 2023.
© PrimmLife.com 2023