NOTES ON AN EXECUTION by Danya Kukafka

I have lots of adjectives for this novel—gripping, chilling, creepy, disturbing, to name a few, in a Silence of the Lambs sort of way.  No, Ansel is not a cannibal, but he is a serial killer who is on Death Row and about to be executed.  It is not about the women he murdered, except for the last one, and she was his ex-wife.  The author gives us an imagining of what their lives could have been, but Ansel definitely receives top billing here.  Three other women share the crumbs from the rest of the narrative— the police detective who eventually nabs Ansel, the sister of his ex-wife, and his mother.  Saffy, the detective, was in the same foster home as Ansel for a time and therefore has first-hand knowledge of his sadistic behavior as a child.  Hazel is the twin sister of Ansel’s ex-wife, Jenny, and has always lived in Jenny’s shadow.  Ansel’s mother flees an abusive marriage in order to save herself but leaves four-year-old Ansel and his infant brother behind.  One could hypothesize that this trauma damaged Ansel to the point that he became a psychopath, but, in actuality, Ansel was twisting off the heads of chipmunks before she left.  In many ways, Ansel is the stereotypical Charles Manson type of killer whose magnetism attracts vulnerable women.  He philosophizes about the choices people makes, and he sometimes chooses to be a good person, but he is a monster, nonetheless.  My favorite character was Saffy, but even she disappointed me at times.  This book is not really a thriller, as we know that Ansel is a murderer from the get-go.  The event of his arrest is more a question of how and when, than if he will be arrested.  A bigger question is whether Ansel will actually be executed or if his escape plan will be successful.