STAFF PICKS--Sorry: A Thriller

Valerie's Staff Pick-- Sorry: A Thriller, by Zoran Drvenkar

Four young Berliners--Kris, Tamara, Frauke and Wolf--are at the end of their ropes.  Unemployed, scorned by relatives, outsiders in almost all respects, they stumble one night onto a brilliant idea.  They will offer an apology service for businesses that have laid off or otherwise mistreated individuals, and for a significant fee release middle managers and chief executives of the guilt they carry bottled up inside.  Much to their surprise, the enterprise is a huge success, which leads to their intersection with you, when you hire them to apologize to a woman you have just murdered by nailing her to a wall with 16 inch nails.

Crucial sections of the book are written in the second person, while the rest of the novel switches casually between third and first and even first-person plural, and that at times you--you, the reader--are unsure who's speaking.  You'll learn that the other "you" of Drvenkar's novel is a sadistic killer.  "You" don't just drop in for the occasional nail-a-woman-to-the-wall; you take part in the story.  You're in it.  As you gradually bring about the friends' ruin we learn so much about you, and why you do what you do.

We learn that you possess a fully fleshed history and reasons for your actions that, even if they provide some justification, do not let you off the hook.  Which is as it should be, for at the core of Sorry, is the question of guilt and absolution.

Sorry is the kind of thriller, the kind of novel, that doesn't come along every day.  Read it, you won't be "sorry."