The Snakes

Summary (from the publisher): 'I wonder if it hurts them to shed their skins,’ she said. She didn’t feel afraid standing in the darkness, imagining snakes, even with the smell of death in the air.

Bea and Dan, recently married, rent out their tiny flat to escape London for a few precious months. Driving through France they visit Bea’s dropout brother Alex at the hotel he runs in Burgundy. Disturbingly, they find him all alone and the ramshackle hotel deserted, apart from the nest of snakes in the attic.

When Alex and Bea’s parents make a surprise visit, Dan can’t understand why Bea is so appalled, or why she’s never wanted him to know them; Liv and Griff Adamson are charming, and rich. They are the richest people he has ever met. Maybe Bea’s ashamed of him, or maybe she regrets the secrets she’s been keeping.

Tragedy strikes suddenly, brutally, and in its aftermath the family is stripped back to its heart, and then its rotten core, and even Bea with all her strength and goodness can’t escape.

Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this novel from HarperCollins. 

Therapist Bea and her mixed-race artist husband Dan decide to escape their tiny flat in London for a few months. Their first stop on their trip is to visit Bea's brother Alex at the hotel he runs in Burgundy, France. However, when they arrive they find Alex alone in a rundown empty hotel, except for an infestation of snakes that can be heard rustling about in the attic. Their next surprise is a sudden visit from Bea's parents, with whom Bea has a very strained and distant relationship. Soon after their arrival, tragedy strikes and Bea and Alex are thrust into a confrontation of their core desires, the solidity of their relationship, and a deep look at their dark world of greed for wealth. 

From the book's title and the novel's summary, I was led to believe that the snakes would play a much more prominent role in this novel. However, the actual snakes are relatively harmless; it's the people in this novel who prove to be the really dangerous snakes. Yet the early foreboding tone established by the quiet overhead rustling of snakes continues throughout the novel. This is a slow burn of a novel that builds to its ghastly conclusion. It is dark and ominous, threatening at every turn. 

While this is a murder mystery, it is more accurate to consider it a character study. Focusing largely on Bea and Dan, the novel also hones in on Bea's family and her complicated relationship with them and their wealth. The novel is hugely focused on social class, wealth, desire for the power that comes with wealth, as well as race. Alex is hugely seduced by the power and luxury offered by Bea's family money, which Bea has spent her whole life trying to escape in order to live an ordinary life. The author is making an unambiguous statement that wealth and desperate searching for wealth will lead to evil and destruction. Bea is painted as saintlike and more morally upstanding (if less physically attractive) than her husband and family because of her ability to resist the allure of money and what it can provide. 

The novel does an excellent job of slowly building to its grisly end and showing the conflict between Bea and Alex that also builds as the novel progresses. However, it did feel as if the novel could have been far shorter. I also am unsure of how I feel about the way the novel paints all money or the desire for money as bad. However, all in all I this is a quick read that kept drawing in me and successfully builds tension and interest until the end. 

Stars: 4

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