The Butterfly Garden opens with Maya/Inara (our protagonist whose real name remains unknown) being interviewed by a detective (protagonist #2) following a harrowing escape from the clutches of serial killer. You don't know much at first except there was a fire, she and a number of other captives escaped, and the cops think she's hiding something (the "payoff" of which, by the way, is incredibly disappointing and Soapy). Now, I'm no trauma expert or FBI agent, but I found it tough to believe that they would haul a kidnapping/rape victim into an interrogation room minutes after she was rescued because none of the other victims would talk. But, for the sake of plot development, let's (hopefully) pretend that our law system is so callous. The story then proceeds to alternate between the interview and "Maya's" time in the Garden.
She recounts the menial and everyday aspects of the Garden, where each girl had her own room and personal shower, was given three square meals a day plus snacks, received healthcare from a live-in nurse, received "gifts" that appealed to their passions (Maya was given books, another girl a piano, another girl modeling clay, etc...), and how they all intermittently got along and squabbled. Add a few Greek letters and it could sound like any sorority house in a quaint college town...until she recounts the other aspects of the Garden.
A place where the women were regularly raped by "the Gardener," as they referred to their captor, who insisted it was love and never outwardly caused them physical harm, and by his son Avery, who reveled in the brutality and sadism and sent more than one woman to the infirmary or an early grave. A place where the doors would only open with a code and soundproof walls cordoned off their rooms whenever a landscaping crew came to tend to the Garden. A place where the Gardener could easily kill them by releasing toxic chemicals through the air vents. And a place where your beauty was captured and frozen in time (or resin, as it were) and put on display like so many butterflies on your 21st birthday...if pregnancy, illness, near-fatal injury, suicide, or an unwillingness to cooperate didn't expedite the process. As Maya reflected,
Other people got to look at a birthday and say, "Yay! One year older!" We met our birthdays with, "Fuck. One year less."This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the story to the author and share the Good and the Bad of The Butterfly Garden.
The Good:
-It's unapologetically dark: I know, a book about a serial killer is obviously going to be dark, right? This brand of dark went beyond the pale. Maya tells her story with such frankness and directness that you have no other choice than to make direct eye contact with evil. From the way she mentally recited Poe while she was raped to how she described the butterflies Avery broke:
There was a girl in there already, her wrists bound to the wall with heavy rings. Blood thickly coated her thighs and parts of her face, trailed down from a nasty bite on one breast, and her head lolled forward at an awkward angle...handprints wrapped around her throat and bone protruded against the skin on one side. "She wasn't as strong as you are."
...Zara could barely walk after that, and every part of her was bruised. Someone stayed with her at all times just to help her with basic functions like showering, getting to the toilet, and eating...it was either take her to a hospital or put her in glass.-Its antagonist is complex: Make no mistake about it: The Gardener is a rapist who kidnaps girls, holds them against their will, and murders them on or before their 21st birthday to add to his collection. That being said, he was not all black and white. He genuinely believed he was giving these women a better life and that he was making love to them, not raping them, simply because they didn't fight back. He cared for each of them uniquely and mourned them when they died--at his hand or not--and would touch the hanging cases that became their tombs while he whispered their names each time he passed. He gave them the things he thought would bring them joy because it made him happy to think they were happy. He was a monster, but a different breed of monster than you're used to.
The Bad:
-The protagonist: While she did get a little better as the book went on, Maya was an aggravating character. She tried too hard to remain aloof in the interrogation room and lacked true empathy for the majority of her time in the Garden. Hutchison crafted this unrealistic character with too sad an origin story to feel authentic--complete with parents who abandon her, a pedophiliac neighbor, a grandmother who takes her in and never acknowledges her, and a handsy landscaper. I lacked the ability to suspend my disbelief at a girl who fell through the cracks of the system, rarely attended school, and lacked any formal education past the age of 14, yet read Poe, The Brothers Karamazov, Antigone, and Lysistrata for pleasure.
-The non-linear timeline: I'm not referring to the difference in flashbacks vs. interrogation, but the timeline of the flashbacks. I'm sure it was written this way in an attempt to skirt around a plot development that is addressed halfway through the book, but it could have been done much better. It would vacillate from the day Maya woke up in the Garden, to two years after her capture, to the time she shared an apartment with other waitresses in NYC, and back to six months after she arrived in the Garden. Hutchison must have known this would confuse readers as she made a point to always start that section with a timeline-establishing comment.
-The POV shake ups: This took me out of the book far too many times. When it was Maya narrating, it was first-person (I, I, me, me), but when it's Victor narrating, it's all third-person (Victor, he).
TL;DR: If you're looking for a fresh and candid story that follows a problematic victim and a not-quite-but-almost sympathetic serial killer, The Butterfly Garden is 276 pages you won't regret if you can keep your suspension of disbelief from flying away.
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