The Weak Spot

The Weak Spot, Lucie Elven

In The Weak Spot, an unnamed narrator arrives in a small unnamed town, only accessible by funicular, to begin her pharmacy internship. She is greeted by the pharmacist, August Malone, a man with a strange sway over others in the town, and who greets our narrator with an interview that seems designed to throw her off balance and establish his power over her and the town.

Throughout the story, the detail sare vague as our narrator proceeds through her day. The town, the pharmacy, and the pharmacist – who soon begins his campaign for mayor – all have a vaguely unsettling feel. The town is isolated and that is exaggerated throughout with the geographic isolation blending with psychological isolation that seems to create this town as a world apart.

This is the type of book that usually has a great appeal to me – unsettling danger that is never clearly spelled out, some sort of knowledge everyone but our protagonist is in on, psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator – and it had some strong reviews from others who seem drawn to that sort of thing. But the promise never actually panned out for me. The details and threat were always far too vague to me. It wasn’t that the book had an unsettling feel so much as I could tell it was trying to imply there was an unsettling feel. And that just wasn’t enough. Additionally, the lack of details, while I common trope in this sort of thing, eventually made the different characters, days, and stories, blend together. I lost track of what I was supposed to be worried about. And I knew I didn’t want Malone to be mayor, but I was never really clear why.

All in all, the book didn’t hang together for me. I wasn’t really sure where it was going, or how to interpret the plot. I wanted to like this better than I did, but it never came together as a story.