Chapter 1: Delightfully Depressing

As I’m sure you’ve gathered from Brittany and Rosemary’s posts about the first chapter, All Souls doesn’t exactly start off cheerfully. Michael describes how fearful he is to go to Southie, with a man in a suit, after an article is written about him. This alone made it clear (to me at least)  that at this time, Southie wasn’t exactly friendly. Then after he went through the list of who and how kids were killed…he didn’t exactly make Southie seem like la-la land.

Regardless of how shitty unfriendly frightening not nice MacDonald make Southie out to be, when he goes there for All Souls’ Night (see Rosemary’s All Souls’ Night post for more) he knows many of the people there. It seems odd to me that in a place where everybody knows everybody, there could be so animosity. But then again, in my idea of a place where everybody knows everybody, there also aren’t drugs, gangs, or Whitey Bulger. I guess that’s what some people call a game changer.

In Brittany’s post, she mentioned that this is the type of book where people are entertained by the tragedies…I would characterize myself as one of those people. I don’t know if I like reading about the way these kids were murdered, or just find it curious that anyone would find it necessary to stab someone seventy-five times…and then light them on fire. Maybe I’m just a little twisted. Whatever the reason, despite how depressing this chapter was, I enjoyed it. Who knows, maybe the rest of the book will be cheerful and it won’t feel so weird for me to enjoy it.

**Just a quick note, my first post talked about some of the events happening during the time which this book is set. Turns out, MacDonald did touch upon some of these in the first chapter. Since I researched the events he mentioned, I definitely felt like I understood some of the references he was making.