Sarah Schmidt

Praised by Paula Hawkins as the "next great thriller" (Town & Country), Sarah Schmidt's debut is a masterful reimagining of the infamous Lizzie Borden story and an unsettling portrait of a troubled family

See what I Have Done

Melissa Palmer

Book #73 Read in 2017
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

This was a good read. While not exactly action packed, the writing made this a gripping psychological read, focusing on the case of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie took an axe to both her father and her stepmother. This book delves into the dysfunction of the Borden family and that makes this book an interesting read. I borrowed this book from the public library.

“One of America’s most notorious murder cases inspires this feverish debut” novel that goes inside the mind of Lizzie Borden (The Guardian). On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. In this riveting debut novel, Sarah Schmidt reimagines the day of the infamous murders as an intimate story of a family devoid of love. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell―of a father with an explosive temper, a spiteful stepmother, and two spinster sisters desperate for their independence. As the police search for clues, Lizzie’s memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.

A Novel

See What I Have Done

Sandi King

Weird, fragmented storytelling that made it hard to read. It was so unpleasant I never got past "Part 2".

Amy Maddess

Haunting, gripping and gorgeously written, SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE by Sarah Schmidt is a re-imagining of the unsolved American true crime case of the Lizzie Borden murders, for fans of BURIAL RITES and MAKING A MURDERER. 'Eerie and compelling' Paula Hawkins 'Stunning' Sunday Times 'Gripping... outstanding' Observer 'Glittering' Irish Times Just after 11am on 4th August 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He's found on the sitting room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both murdered with an axe. It is younger daughter Lizzie who is first on the scene, so it is Lizzie who the police first question, but there are others in the household with stories to tell: older sister Emma, Irish maid Bridget, the girls' Uncle John, and a boy who knows more than anyone realises. In a dazzlingly original and chilling reimagining of this most notorious of unsolved mysteries, Sarah Schmidt opens the door to the Borden home and leads us into its murkiest corners, where jealousies, slow-brewed rivalries and the darkest of thoughts reside.

Cerys

A very interesting retelling. However, this book slowly became boring to me. My immediate reaction to this book made me believe that this could have been a 5-star read. However, the pace slowed halfway through this book, this caused me some struggle. I am glad I finished this book as I found it a very interesting interpretation, but the switch in pace annoyed me greatly and made the last legs of this book a struggle.

A very interesting retelling. However, this book slowly became boring to me. My immediate reaction to this book made me believe that this could have been a 5-star read. However, the pace slowed halfway through this book, which caused me some struggle. I am glad I finished this book as I found it a very interesting interpretation, but the switch in pace annoyed me greatly and made the last legs of this book a struggle.

I'm tempted to give this one star, but I feel like the fact that I didn't hate it enough to DNF it means that it deserves more than one star.

My god, what a tedious and nonsensical book. First of all, having four first-person perspectives was INCREDIBLY unnecessary and added length that wasn't needed. Of course, sometimes multiple perspectives can be valuable as they give different perspectives, but to be honest, the events in this book were not interesting enough to warrant it. Small point to the author for the perspectives being somewhat different (as in, it's not the worst multiple-first-person example I've seen) but the writing style was inconsistent throughout so it certainly isn't a great example either.

Second, THE REPETITION. At first, I thought it would be just in Lizzie's chapters (and I never EVER want to hear about a clock on a mantle tick, ticking AGAIN!) and it would lend itself to showing that she thought and behaved strangely and erratically, but the repetition and frantic style of writing showed up in other chapters as well. In her sister Emma's chapter, she says "I wanted more from this person" THREE TIMES in two pages. There were many instances of a word repeated, such as the tick tick of the clock, but it appeared in all four perspectives: "sip sip," "chock chock," etc. It was incredibly annoying.

Parts of the prose were passable, but many sections were full of the repetition and other awkward phrasing. The style was frankly horrible throughout, with maybe 1/4 of the book actually enjoyable (and by that, I mean worthy of 3 stars). There was no consistent mood or mode of storytelling, nor was there a consistent timeline. It jumped back and forth within chapters and between chapters. Thankfully, the chapters started with the date so that provided some context (though chapters occurring on the same date were not necessarily in order either), but within chapters there would be page long tangents about remembering random events in the past, and many of them were pointless in my opinion.

I feel like there could've been an interesting story here, but the author managed to make this previously interesting event totally dull and lifeless. I found myself hating everyone and not caring at all about anything I was reading.

Okay, I'll give it 1.5 stars and round to 2 since I did finish it. But seriously, this book was not worth my time.

Amanda Wells

I really enjoyed this book. Although I think you can tell quite early on what has happened, the insights into the various perspectives really coloured what happened.

What shone through was a really ominous and twisted view of familial love and obligation - which is not something I'd often praise in a book, but it really provided a suitable backdrop for this particular story.

Tanya Sutton

Despite this being the story of the famous Borden ax murders, at it's heart it's really the story of a terribly dysfunctional family. Sarah Schmidt's novel paints a fabulously unsettling picture of the Borden family - a family ruled by a tyrannical, miserly patriarch, an addled stepmother, codependent and unstable sisters, and poor Bridget the maid, who sees everything but is powerless to intervene or escape. 

Lizzie is an unreliable narrator (as is to be expected, I suppose) and the narration in the chapters told from her perspective is dizzying in it's erratic and piecemeal presentation. Her thoughts jump around, concentrating heavily on sensation - what she felt, saw, heard, tasted - and she focuses on seemingly unimportant details (these details would prove to be important later, of course). I am delighted, however, to see that the other characters in the story are very well fleshed out and were what grounded the novel when Lizzie's narration took a fantastical turn. Schmidt's ability to write the characters in such a believable fashion serves to highlight just how unbalanced Lizzie was. 

The gruesome nature of the crimes lends itself to a few death scenes in the novel which are handled in an understated but deeply unsettling way. The reactions of each person to the bodies are entirely in line with their characters. For those with squeamish stomachs, I advise avoiding food while reading. Also perhaps food after reading as well considering how food is also handled in the book (the MUTTON STEW! ). 

This book is dark, haunting, unsettling, but also beautiful in it's style. Schmidt's expert combination of historical accuracy and creepy storytelling makes for a superb and fresh retelling of a well-known American murder. 

(Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic Press for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.)

This and other reviews can be found at www.wearebooked.blog.

This is a weirdly solid, fast read. It gives some thought to theories, but I think the multiple viewpoints hindered the overall feel of the book. It read fast, but lacked a level of depth I was hoping to see.

Also, in song remember Lizzie having pigeons? I'll have to look that up.

'He was still bleeding. I yelled, "Someone's killed Father." I breathed in kerosene air, licked the thickness from my teeth. The clock on the mantel ticked ticked. I looked at Father, the way hands clutched to thighs, the way the little gold ring on his pinky finger sat like a sun. I gave him that ring for his birthday when I no longer wanted it. "Daddy," I had said. "I'm giving this to you because I love you." He had smiled and kissed my forehead. A long time ago now.'On 4 August 1892 Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. During the inquest into the deaths, Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the murder of her father and her stepmother.Through the eyes of Lizzie's sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, the enigmatic stranger Benjamin and the beguiling Lizzie herself, we return to what happened that day in Fall River. Lizzie Borden took an axe. Or did she?

Dearna Mulvaney

Renee Blankenship

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt is her debut novel, a fictionalized account of the infamous Lizzie Borden murder case, where Mr. and Mrs. Borden were found gruesomely butchered in their home on a Thursday morning, August 4th 1892. You can read more about the actual Lizzie Borden case online and also visit the Borden home in Fall River, Massachusetts. 

Sarah Schmidt did something extraordinary with this story, it's almost hard to even explain. Using descriptive language in even the most mundane sentences, she created a sense of unease throughout all 319 pages that left me personally anxious to turn each page not knowing what I was going to find. She created a sense of dread that slowly crept up on you, with phrases that attacked your senses when simply describing the old mutton on the stove, the rotten pears on the ground or the smell of bodies in a room. Everything had a dark and gruesome undercurrent that built and built until the final page and sentence. 

Told through the alternating view points of various characters over the course of three days, alongside flashbacks, See What I Have Done takes you on a ride that makes you wonder what really happened to this family while also being altogether disgusted and disturbed by them (thanks again, to Schmidt's excellent writing). Some of the scenes were particularly gruesome and descriptive! Every sentence is written with intention, to create suspicion and unease which creates an atmosphere of anxiety and horror. But its so expertly done, you almost don't even notice it until you close the book and wonder why you have such an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach. (Oh right, it's because I've just spent too much time inside Lizzie Borden's head). 

She made my teeth want to sink into her flesh and eat her out of my life, made me want to swarm her mind and sort through all the thoughts she had of me, that I was being too stubborn, I was being too secretive, I was being bad, I was, I was. I felt her nastiness crawl over my skin, tiny deaths that made me want to become nothing.

It took me a few days to get this story out of my mind, while also continuously applauding Sarah Schmidt for creating such a beautifully written, dark and disturbing character study of Lizzie Borden and the terrible events that unfolded on that August morning. 

I love both covers of this book as well, not just because they are beautiful in their own right but because by the end of the book the significance of both the pear and the pigeon meant so much more. I can't look at either without remembering scenes from the book. Read this book and trust me, you'll feel the same way. 

I really can't say enough how brilliant this book was! When I saw it put out early at my local bookstore last week I just wanted to stand there and point it out to everyone who passed by..."THIS BOOK! Buy it. Buy it right now. There's nothing like it."

Kristen Claiborn

Matt Leonard

"A prickly, unsettling wonder: a story so tactile and feverishly surreal it feels like a sort of reverse haunting . . . As much as See What I Have Done is Borden's story, it's also an unvarnished glimpse of what it means to be female, in ways not strictly confined to the late 19th century." --Entertainment Weekly

Zoey Mikalatos

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Katie Mitchell

Haunting, gripping and gorgeously written, SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE by Sarah Schmidt is a re-imagining of the unsolved American true crime case of the Lizzie Borden murders, for fans of BURIAL RITES and MAKING A MURDERER. 'Eerie and compelling, Sarah Schmidt breathes such life into the terrible, twisted tale of Lizzie Borden and her family, she makes it impossible to look away' Paula Hawkins When her father and step-mother are found brutally murdered on a summer morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden - thirty two years old and still living at home - immediately becomes a suspect. But after a notorious trial, she is found innocent, and no one is ever convicted of the crime. Meanwhile, others in the claustrophobic Borden household have their own motives and their own stories to tell: Lizzie's unmarried older sister, a put-upon Irish housemaid, and a boy hired by Lizzie's uncle to take care of a problem. This unforgettable debut makes you question the truth behind one of the great unsolved mysteries, as well as exploring power, violence and the harsh realities of being a woman in late nineteenth century America.

See what I Have Done

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