Showing all posts tagged: Benjamin Stevenson
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, Benjamin Stevenson
5 April 2022
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, the new novel from Australian stand-up comedian and author Benjamin Stevenson, has a synopsis to match its eye-catching title, a veritable contender for novel title of the year award if there were such a thing:
I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder. Before the storm stranded us at the mountain resort, snow and bodies piling up. The thing is, us Cunninghams don’t really get along. We’ve only got one thing in common — we’ve all killed someone. My brother. My step-sister. My wife. My father. My mother. My sister-in-law. My uncle. My stepfather. My aunt. Me.
The quirkiness doesn’t end with the premise and name though, even Stevenson’s way of story-telling deviates slightly from the norm, he tells us how the novel ends on the first page, as he explains to Australian critic Beejay Silcox, writing for The Guardian:
Benjamin Stevenson has a cinephile buddy who seeks out spoilers. Once an ending is good and ruined, he can focus on the film. Stevenson’s new novel was inspired by this back-to-front tactic. “I thought: ‘what if I spoiled the entire book on the first page,” the author explained in a recent interview, “can I build a crime novel out of it?”‘.
Maybe there’s something in taking such an approach… Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone has been optioned for a limited series adaptation by Home Box Office (HBO).
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