To Die For

To Die For by Joyce Maynard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


25-year-old Suzanne was always going to go places. Ambitious, full of aphorisms and positive can-do energy, she wills herself into a job at a tiny television station in her New Hampshire hometown. The job isn’t much, but she has lots of ideas and she is desperate for fame and success in a way than her little town can't contain.

She is married to Larry Maretto, who is completely devoted to her. He used to be a drummer in a rock band but now, he quickly turns to thoughts of raising children and settling down. To all the world it seems like they are the perfect couple.

But behind the scenes is a different story. In many ways, Larry is not the man she married. While she wants to be the next Barbara Walters, Larry just wants to stay home and raise kids. It is a far cry from the exciting life she imagined.

But Suzanne finds a project that will satisfy her enormous ambition: interviewing “at risk” kids at the local high school. To that end, out of thousands, she manages to find only three who will volunteer: one of whom being 16-year-old Jimmy Emmet.

Suzanne, Jimmy, and the other two students (Russell and Lydia) spend time outside of school, but quickly it is young Jimmy who becomes infatuated with Suzanne. Eventually, they become involved, which dovetails with Suzanne’s one-sided marriage and her ambition to be more than she is. She takes advantage of the inexperienced and poorly educated Jimmy and soon hatches a plan to eliminate the man who stands in her way.

And that’s where it gets messy…

To Die For is told by multiple alternating narrators, who all have their own version of the truth. We hear from Suzanne, her mother, Jimmy, other students, the police detectives, etc. It reads like a true crime documentary, but as it came out in the early ‘90s and is more than generously based on a real event (Pamela Smart…Google it) it is patterned after some of the trashy TV that was on back then (Hard Copy, anyone?). Events seen through the eyes of one character are completely different through the eyes of another. It brings to mind all the issues with eye-witness testimony: If we don’t even see the same things, how can we agree on truth?

To Die For is by no means great literature. But it’s good trashy fun.







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