| Publisher | Orenda Books |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 25 November 2021 |
| ISBN-10 | 1913193756 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1913193751 |
| Format | paperback |
| Pages | 276 |
| Price | £ 8.99 |
Psychopaths Anonymous
by
Maeve, a successful independent woman in a high-powered job, leads a pretty good life. But she is also an alcoholic and a sex addict and cannot stop killing men. When she fails to get support from an Alcoholics Anonymous group, she decides to set up her own.
Review
Psychopaths Anonymous is a very unusual book. In fact, it is completely off the wall, violent and dark. Some terrible things happen, people die, or are murdered, in horrible ways, there are suspicions and suspects. Yet maybe I didn’t want the police to dig too deep into the strange circumstances surrounding these events, because Psychopaths Anonymous is basically about psychopaths who seem to need a lot of support.
The main character, Maeve, appears to have everything that’s considered important in the contemporary world. A high-powered job and a beautiful home in London keep her safe and secure. She has independence, freedom and flair. Uncomplicated one-evening and one-night encounters keep her sexual appetite satisfied but that’s not enough because she is a not only a highly functioning alcoholic but an addict dependent on sex and killing men.
Maeve tries various support groups to share her obsessions yet none of them provide any real assistance. She decides to create her own, based on the loose interpretation of the Twelve Steps program, which she had tried to understand and follow in the AA. That comes with huge difficulty as several of the concepts don’t fit with her own thinking, especially the concept of faith and surrendering yourself to a higher power, such as God.
As she sets up Psychopaths Anonymous (PA) in a community centre where she met fellow alcoholics and a priest who irritated her beyond measure, she is astonished to see people who open up about their psychopathic tendencies. She recognises many emotions, easily detects various forms of violence, and becomes wary of dangerous people who finally have a chance to open up and talk freely. Maeve keeps the group secret because she finally finds a man she thinks she loves and wants to be in a relationship with him.
Maeve tries very hard to be a good partner to Seth. Also, other group members don’t follow the rules and one of them attracts attention from the police. PA fails to deliver the support Maeve craves and so her drinking becomes uncontrollable, and the killings are better planned. The danger of exposure makes her slowly loose her grasp on reality.
Will Carver delivers a brilliant, ferocious commentary on human nature and all the aspects of it that people prefer to hide. In the process, he also creates an unpredictably funny thriller about obsessions and connections. He challenges common societal concepts, presents graphic, murderous ideas and to top it all, the book sparkles with dark, dry humour. Read and enjoy Psychopaths Anonymous at your peril.
Reviewed 12 November 2022 by Ewa Sherman
