I wasn't going to write a review of this, as I've been incredibly busy lately - which is why I've only read one book in March so far. However, the ending left me with A Lot of Feelings, so here is... an informal review, if you like. (It will have a lot of spoilers in it. I will use the spoiler tags, but these are BIG spoilers, so don't click if you're planning to read the book.)

What They Do in the Dark is about three young girls in mid-1970s Yorkshire. Gemma is middle-class, relatively spoilt, a quintessential good girl. Pauline is working-class, the daughter of a prostitute, neglected and living in squalor. The third, Eulalia 'Lallie' Paluza, is not so much a character as a plot device: a precocious child star, whom Gemma worships, Lallie comes to the other girls' town to film a movie, sparking a chain of events that affects everyone in the story. Coe's narrative takes turns between Gemma's viewpoint (first person), Pauline's viewpoint (third person), and a few adult characters including Vera, an actress working on the film, and Quentin, a heavily drug-dependent producer from the US.

As the story progresses, cracks open up. Gemma is being (view spoiler)[sexually abused by her mother's new boyfriend (hide spoiler)]; Pauline has begun (view spoiler)[to sell herself on the streets, the only way (other than stealing) she knows how to make money (hide spoiler)]. These developments are conveyed with wonderful subtlety and realism, and the various voices/perspectives are pitch-perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed Coe's writing throughout the book - there are so many innovative metaphors and turns of phrase, and the language works so well for its setting and context.

And then, in the final chapter, the plot veers in a completely different direction from anything that's come before. (view spoiler)[Out of practically nowhere, Gemma and Pauline are portrayed teaming up to torment, assault and possibly murder (?) a classmate, Cynthia, in what may be a racially motivated attack, or simply a horrific example of bullying.

I mean, I will level with you, I don't understand why this happened. I get that it's subversive - the reader obviously expects the climax of the book to refer to the fact that Gemma and Pauline, who are both being abused by adults, are victims: instead, that concept is turned on its head as they become the perpetrators of needless violence and cruelty. But I really wasn't sure why the author felt this was necessary, or what the point was supposed to be. Is it just that the girls are pushed to behave like this because of what they've suffered? Is it that Gemma is meant to be seen as an unreliable narrator, that she was the bully all along, and her part of the narrative was basically a lie? Is it a comment on classism, the fact that the reader (like the adults in the story) would be automatically inclined to consider Pauline the 'bad one' because of her poor background, when really Gemma is just as 'bad'? Is it about what the story doesn't tell us, the things hidden between the lines, the unspoken ways in which the girls punish others for the horrible things they're going through? Or all of the above? (hide spoiler)]

Aside from the ending, my other complaint about What They Do in the Dark was that I wasn't sure what Quentin's viewpoint added to the story. I must admit I found it hard to follow what was actually going on in her chapters. Despite my reservations about both this and the ending, however, I thought this was an excellent first novel, so beautifully constructed and written - hence the four-star rating. It's just a shame it had to push so far into shocking territory to the extent that the climax seemed bizarre. If anyone else has read it, I'd be interested to know how you felt about the ending and what conclusions you thought were supposed to be drawn from it.