The Farm

4.5 stars. This went in a completely different direction to what I expected. And it was all the better for it.

I thought this book was going to be dull; the premise, as billed certainly didn't seem that original: a woman alleges a horrible crime. Is she crazy or is it a coverup? Probably one of the most cliche plots. In addition, I tend to avoid literary depictions of “crazy” that don't resemble reality – for example, highly organized improbable thoughts, being presented calmly and rationally. (I'm biting back a long digression here about the history of psychiatry as a tool to discredit women. By the way, the most coherent psychotic episode I've ever witnessed included a patient telling us how groundhogs were equipped with satellites to spy on her – they're very rarely calm, realistic and difficult to dissect from reality.)
But the Farm, while it skirts that cliched territory, avoids it, rather being something much deeper about people, and their relationships to each other.

I first got drawn in in the first chapter. The (ostensible) narrator, Daniel, notes that he hasn't told his parents that he's gay, even though he considers himself close to them, because they tried so hard to create a happy childhood for them and he doesn't want them to doubt that he was happy. This paragraph, a virtual aside, I found so twisted, so illogical and so compelling that I had to read further to find out if it was intentional. The answer is unequivocally yes: this is the world Smith has created for Daniel. A world where people keep relatively benign, mundane secrets from each other for no good reason, except the desire to keep a completely perfect facade. This is one example of money that will come forth in the book and Smith makes it quite clear: the premise of the book – where either Daniel's mother has either been completely psychotic for about a year, or where Daniel's father is involved in a conspiracy to commit murder and has been for several months, all the while Daniel thinking that they were happily living on a farm – is only possible in the context where secrets are habitually kept under the guise of emotional “closeness.” I thought this had particular relevance to today's age and facebook culture, where people post a carefully curated life and keep their feelings under close wraps.

The bulk of the book, while still officially narrated by Daniel, is really the exposition of his mother, Tilde, her “evidence” for the conspiracy and her story of what has happened. Far from being an over-the-top portrayal of psychosis or the depiction of a completely normal woman taken for insane for no clear reason, Smith's depiction here is nuanced: it's impossible to get through this section without believing that Tilde is extrapolating quite a lot from quite a little and, conversely, without believing that there are at least some goings-on that are not totally on the up-and-up. I found out after I read the book that it is based on an autobiographical episode, wherein Smith's mother, who had been living on a farm in Sweden, flew to see him, alleging that his father was involved in a conspiracy, and was declared psychotic. I think the experience and the realism really shows through, here. I loved little touches like the episode where Tilde is mushroom picking and realizes she's got a basket full of leaves instead, and by that point it's so clear she's been hallucinating, but she instead confabulates a story about being gaslit. It's so clear to the reader and so, so sad.

The other thing that I'll note, is in the genre of Shocking Family Secrets! which I usually avoid, because it's usually one of three secrets anyway (affair! homosexuality! abuse!) The Farm built up this shocking secret, about how Tilde, while she claims to lime and respect her parents, ran away and hasn't spoken to them since she was sixteen. And I was convinced that it would be a canonical secret, and it wasn't and indeed, I was shocked: Tilde had a best friend, Freja, who believed in trolls, and they tried to run away together, but it failed and afterwards Freja denied she'd ever been friends with Tilde, and then died under suspicious circumstances. And Tilde ran away because she knew that her parents believed that she killed Freja, even though she didn't. I finished this section and it was chilling -- this idea of "they don't believe me, I'm going to run away from the country forever and never look back" was so beyond the norm and so beyond what I expected, and it really established the tone for the stakes of Tilde's narrative. If I could nest spoilers I would, because once I worked through the matryoshka doll of this secret to find a classic family secret at the middle (Tilde's narrative, in which nests the imputed murder of Freja/Tilde's first psychotic break, in which nests Tilde's father's first story about Freja being imaginary, in which nests Tilde's abuse at her father's hands) I was already sufficiently impressed with the delicate psychology that Smith worked to be impressed

“If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.”

The Farm is a quick, engrossing read, the kind of book you'll want to finish in one sitting. Short chapters end in cliffhangers, resulting in a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Descriptions of the stark Swedish countryside, of hunting mushrooms in the forest, and of creeping around the house of a neighbor come to life through Smith's expert voice. As well as bringing individual scenes to life, Smith also successfully conveys the suffocating isolation the residents of Chris & Tilde's new home feel, as though the location was a character itself.

The real-life events that inspired the events in this novel - the mental breakdown of Smith's mother - creates the ring of truth that makes this story so compelling. Tilde appears sane and reliable even as her story becomes less believable, moving farther into her suspicion and mythology. The reader experiences the same confusion and skepticism that Daniel does. The tension he feels in being asked to choose between his mother and his father is palpable to the reader, especially as he begins to realize that he does not know his parents as well as he had previously believed.

The Farm is a true psychological thriller. There are no car chases, shootouts, or dramatic last-minute rescues. At it's heart, it is about trust - how much do we really know about the people we love and who would we believe? This fast-paced novel is sure to please Smith's existing fans and gain him several new.

(I received a copy of this book from Grand Central Publishing for an honest review.)