Book Review: The Queen by Nick Cutter

Plum and Cherry have been best friends ever since growing up in the same Canadian trailer park together, even giving each other nicknames after the streets they lived on. But then Cherr’s dad hit the patent jackpot and moved her family away to a wealthier part of Port Dalhousie. Perhaps more fatally for the girls’ friendship, high school drama ensued. After one bizarre night at an outdoor party, Plum disappeared, leaving only the tatters of her reputation behind her.

After months pass with no sign of Plum, even Cherr has to concede that her best friend is probably dead. Cherr has been quietly grieving, locking herself in her bedroom and isolating herself from pretty much everyone except her parents, when an unexpected package lands on her doorstep. It contains a phone, allegedly from Plum, who has very definite ideas as to what Cherr needs to do next in order to find her.

Cherr is conflicted, even before she begins following the strange trail of clues Plum has constructed. Her unease only grows as she unravels the truth behind Plum’s disturbing fate, finally admitting to herself:

I wish that she’d stayed gone. I didn’t want her to be hurt or tortured, to feel any pain at all. More that she’d just evaporate painlessly and stay away for good this time. I couldn’t fix what I’d done to her. What we all had done. The past was inflexible that way. It stubbornly resisted alteration. But if she wasn’t around then at least I could begin the hard work of recontextualizing our past, erasing the worst bits, reframing things in an effort to remember them how I needed to, and forgive myself just a little. I could go back to accepting that Plum really was gone (and I already had in the most honest chambers of my heart), and oh god what a piece of shit I am, what a bad friend, a bad person, a fucking ghoul–

Over the course of a single nightmarish day, Cherr must grapple not only with her warring feelings but also with the horrors that Plum is leading her through. For Plum has become something different, something terrifying, something that transcends their town. Is she intent now on revenge for what Cherr did to her before she disappeared? Or is their bond truly as strong and unyielding as the girls had once believed?

Just as hot on Plum’s trail is a mysterious billionaire with his own agenda. Rudyard Crate suffered an unimaginable tragedy as a child, one that marked him both physically and mentally, and drove him to unthinkable acts. To his credit, he’s not completely lacking in self-awareness:

In that crushing moment so long ago, Rudyard Crate had discovered his life’s purpose.

 

He was intelligent enough to realize it was wrong. Also clear-sighted enough to see that his experience had left him with significant mental instability. Hell, he may even be full-on demented! But who gave a ripe shit? Of every benefit conferred by obscene wealth, the best was that people treated you as they would a toddler waddling around with a load of shit in his diaper: everyone smiled pleasantly and plugged their noses, so long as the check cleared.

As Cherr and Rudyard’s paths converge, the lines between hunter and prey will blur, with Plum reeling them in alongside everyone else who has ever wronged her. As allegiances shift, who will survive the nightmare lurking inside their quiet Canadian town, and who will be utterly consumed?

This was a deeply creepy and disturbingly, but never gratuitously, graphic look at science and industry gone mad, and the traumas that orbit these events. Plum is a tragic figure, a manufactured villain who finds agency in power, even as it leaves her deeply isolated. Cherr is your more traditional heroine, fighting tooth and nail to escape a grotesque fate. In a deadly allegory for the social life of young North American women – if not young women worldwide – the two are pitted against each other by circumstances outside of their control, and must fight just as much to keep from harming each other as to save themselves.

And therein lies the surprising heart of this novel: the complicated relationship between Cherr and Plum, brought so vividly yet sensitively to life by Nick Cutter. It honestly felt like he’d ripped out parts of my teenage diary for his book, as I, like Cherr, once agonized over various friendships that felt as vital to me as oxygen. The grace that he shows with his plot choices is exemplary, even as his plausible depiction of what happens when humanity meddles too far with biology leaves long-lasting chills.