Take Me Apart

Sara Sligar’s Take Me Apart tells the story of Miranda Brand, a famous photographer, who died at the height of her career. Her death was ruled a suicide, but not all the details added up. Decades later, Miranda’s son, Theo, hires ex-journalist Kate to sort through Miranda’s papers and create a finding aid so he can sell them to a library. Kate — who has secrets of her own — gets sucked into Miranda’s life, by reading her letters and diary, and starts to suspect what happened isn’t clear.

“The original core idea was wanting to tell a mystery through documents,” Sligar explained. “When I started writing the book, I had a fair amount of experience doing research in archives, and I wanted to recreate that feeling of sifting through papers to try to find proof. Of course, a lot of archival work is pretty boring and unsatisfying, and you often don’t find what you’re looking for, so the trick was trying to give the impression of realism while also making the thriller actually, well, thrilling. The book evolved a lot as I worked through that balance.

Sligar masterfully alternates between Kate’s perspective and her complex relationship with Theo, and the documents Kate is finding in the disorganized piles. Without spoiling too much (it does read a bit thriller-ish), Take Me Apart is an incisive look at women in art, domestic violence, and the complexities of legacy.

Rating: ★★★★