Parker’s Pages: Notes on an Execution

I’m returning to my usual Parker’s Pages standard today and have an intense and thrilling novel to offer. Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka had me up all day and night, gobbling pages like a Thanksgiving feast. This novel is, quite simply, brilliant, and a great weaving of mystery, crime, horror, and intense character study. There simply isn’t anything else like it.

The story unfolds from multiple perspectives, but we mostly follow Ansel Packer, an inmate on death row, in the twenty-four hours leading up to his execution. Ansel is a serial killer, monikered “The Girly Killer,” and the pages slowly reveal the exact nature of his crimes. Through the perspectives of women in Ansel’s life and Ansel’s own thoughts as his execution looms closer and closer, we unravel our story.

There is no doubt that Ansel is guilty, but instead the thrill focuses on the line between good and evil, between nature and nurture. It’s not that we wonder if Ansel has committed the crime, but if he is truly at fault, and if so, if there any good in him at all. It seems straightforward, but Kukafka diverts all expectations. This story is so much more than it seems.

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka (paperback)

The Evergreen Echo

Ansel is a deeply interesting main character. The narrative repeatedly reminds us that he is incapable of feeling, yet each page of his perspective seems rich with emotion. He is acutely aware of his condition, of how everything works around him, the systems he is a part of, and of the emotions and relationships of others. He continuously tells us that due to his condition, he does not feel things like others do; but with so many descriptions of his fear, anxiety, anger, and elation throughout the novel, we begin to wonder if Ansel really doesn’t feel or if he has simply been convinced that he does not.

We empathize with him to a degree. Something in his narration feels familiar—normal, but other parts of his narration are overwhelmingly cruel and manipulative. In a novel focused on introspection, memory, and emotion, Ansel makes the reader panic—you find yourself wondering how you can relate to a murderer, wondering how you can empathize with him, wondering why there are little bits of humanity in him.

One aspect of Ansel’s narration that I found endlessly fascinating, especially as we move into other perspectives, is that Ansel seems completely convinced that he understands the women around him. He speaks openly about how he manipulates them, about how they must feel though he is not in their head. He seems convinced he has all the women in his life wrapped around his finger. “You [Ansel] know how to handle women, and you know how to handle certain types of men” (pg 95).

But once we enter the minds of the women around him—a childhood friend, a sister-in-law, his mother—we find that Ansel really has no clue at all, that the women have far more agency than he would ever give them credit for. As his narration builds himself up to be unreadable, emotionless, and unknowable, the words from each woman reveals that she knows more about Ansel than he ever will.

If you need any more reasons to pick up this novel, let it be this: the writing is brilliant beyond description. Something I admire Kukafka for is her ability to implant incredibly specific details that become metaphorical without her ever having to explain the metaphor itself.

One such example that I was stunned by during my read was a scene in which two twin girls are speaking to each other, acknowledging the growing changes between them and their lives. After one of the girls leaves, the other finds a strand of her sister’s hair left behind. “She brought it to her lips. Rolled it into her mouth. The strand of hair tasted like nothing at all—She could only feel the shape of it, firmly existent, a spider on the pad of her tongue” (pg 88).

I love this section; it holds so much meaning. The strand of hair is a part of her sister, and by putting it in her mouth, it is an attempt to keep her sister with her. If you have ever had a hair in your mouth, you know the feeling—that strange foreign sensation, the way it seems to stick to your tongue. This part of her sister is ever-present and insistent, and she wants to make it a part of her own being by consuming it. Even without directly stating it, the strand of hair becomes a blooming metaphor about the relationship between these sisters, one which builds the more you think on it and the more you learn.

Notes on an Execution is haunting and shakes you up like a maraca. This intense story will have you wondering what it is to be good and bad, what it is to be a person, and the plot will have you on your toes, taking you places you would never expect to go.