‘I loved this book’, said Richard Osborne about ‘How to Kill Your Family’. The book is exhilarating, compulsive, and a must read. Written by Bella Mackie - who managed to find the perfect balance of extremely dark and extremely hilarious – we meet Grace Bernard, who is our protagonist. The book is based around the dark theme of revenge as our main character is a typical ‘anti-hero’. But why are these characters so intriguing? Was Grace justified? Can we relate to her? Let’s have a look.
In ‘How to Kill Your Family’, Grace Bernard spends years meticulously planning and plotting the murder of her entire family. Her father – one of the world’s richest businessmen, who belongs to the infamous ‘Artemis’ family - left her and her mother when she was born with nothing. Despite her mother’s efforts, Grace’s father never reaches out to her as he’s afraid it would ruin him - having already being married. For years onwards she plots her revenge plan, livid at her father for what he’s done. Grace tells us her story and of all the crimes she committed, whilst serving for a crime she didn’t.
In the book, Grace Bernard seems to give a clear justification for each of her murders, and Mackie manipulates this idea into the way she writes the book too – creating pathos for our character, even when we know we shouldn’t feel it. But this brings us onto the question of, is crime ever justified? A person could have had the most traumatic childhood with a twisted back story that makes us all pity them, but does this mean all immoral or illegal actions they take are excused? If Grace was a real person, and this was a globally followed court case, would she receive no remorse from the public? Most likely, due to the fact she killed more people than those who hurt her. However, when reading the book, this fictional character had every right to do as she did in my eyes – which is exactly as Bella Mackie wanted us to feel. So, whilst we can bring ourselves to justify Grace in a fictional setting; in reality, if it was a non-fiction, we could not do the same.
Whilst reading, I also found myself attracted to the behaviour of Grace and fascinated by her thoughts. The norm in any typical story is to love the ‘good guy’ and hate the ‘bad guy’; but when our protagonist is a typical ‘bad guy’, and the author creates a sense of pathos, the line blurs. These kind of characters – anti-heroes – are the ones I feel we relate to most. This is due to their complex nature and the deeper insight we get into their emotions. All we get with our typical ‘heroes’ is a sob story that develops into a motive to ‘save the day’. But anti-heroes display to us deeper emotions throughout their journey, as there is no ‘saving the day’. They display to us reality by not always winning and show us the truth as to what life is really like. And this is why I believe we strongly relate to them so much. Meeting these characters and hearing of their stories can make us feel pitiful; as in a way, they can be interpreted differently by everyone to match these characters themselves. They display what everyone is truly thinking or what everyone would do, but never confesses to thinking so. They are a way for us to vicariously live through them as it’s unacceptable in any other case but the fictional world.
I feel that anti-heroes are so intriguing to us due to their nature and how they’re open to interpretation. They bring our realistic mindsets into fictional stories. They are displayed to feel real emotions and don’t just following a set plot. And with that, I feel that we can all relate to Grace Bernard, in a way that is deeper than just not getting along with our families; but on a psychological level.
