The Last Conversation

Not a good premise during a global pandemic.

Before this, I'd never read anything by Paul Tremblay, but now I look forward to trying one of his novels. Aside from a few hiccups where I had trouble getting into the second person narration style, I enjoyed this short story far more than anticipated. In fact, I expected to hate it because I started (metaphorically) flashing back to poorly written fanfiction with the “insert your name here” format and that's not a part of my ‘literary' past I wish to revisit. Luckily, however, despite its odd format of using “__” to denote instances of the reader-character's name, the psychological horror worked wonderfully.

There were times when I felt annoyed at a choice made by the reader character, as is often the case in second person narratives. I have issues with being told I did a certain thing when I know I wouldn't have; this goes away when I'm placed in the role of a specific character, such as in RPG video games. After the first few pages, I decided to read it as if I were a character of mine instead of myself, and a lot of the irritation went away. Thus, in my mind, the main character became Cassia - a woman who, in another life, was a mage in Dragon Age 2. The other main character, Anne, sure had a fondness for saying Cassia's name, but such is the nature of what's going on in the story.

While I could explain what's happening, to do so would be to take away the most entertaining and enjoyable aspect of this tale: experiencing it first hand and pondering what's happening. I had so many different theories as the story progressed, and though I ultimately settled on something similar to what really happened I was led to an even more unsettling end than anticipated.

I love psychological horror, and this story delivered quite a bit of that. I wish the ending had been a bit less enigmatic and a bit better explained, but overall I really enjoyed the journey and kind of wish this were a VR experience or a video game just for the full immersion those could provide.

One note, though: If you go into this story, be sure that you can handle situations involving potential self-harm as portrayed in second person narrative. I'm not bothered by these things, but one of my close friends is and she was grateful when I warned her about it. So, this is me making sure anyone who stumbles upon my review is also warned.

After I finished this. I realized that there is a major plot hole that cannot be ignored, and that the denouement feels, independent of that realization, like a bit of a cheat gotcha. I expected far better from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts, a book which actually haunted me.