Socialite dying to die can’t find a killer

Agnes Maurer wants to die. And she wants someone to do that for her.

Agnes Lives!, the debut novel of screenwriter Hallie Elizabeth Newton — her first screenplay credit, At Any Price, screened at TIFF in 2013 — covers 24 hours in socialite Agnes’s life as she seeks someone to murder her.

Would it be her boss, editor of the anti-fashion magazine Whorl, where Agnes, a former model, is listed as “cultural council”? The editor has a very attractive knife Agnes thinks could do the job, but editor Justine does not use it. Agnes takes the knife, full of hope she will find someone else to use it.

Will that be Agnes’s famous writer-director boyfriend? No, it won’t. The murderer won’t be the gun dealer she finds on Craigslist, nor the operator of a gun club who insists Agnes watch a video on gun safety. Nor is it the old politician from a previous life, nor a security guard who watches Agnes pee in an alley, nor the apparent Chinatown thugs she tries to buy a gun from, nor is it the famous director, nor the avant-garde artist.

Agnes burning through the characters of New York City is reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy After Hours that sees Griffin Dunne’s character struggling to find his way home across late night New York City. Newton’s story is as exhausting as Scorsese’s, the characters as vibrant, the city as imposing.

But where Scorsese’s storytelling is clear and straightforward, Newton’s is shrouded by Agnes’s stream-of-consciousness prattle. Her side of the conversation with each character is in italics, forcing the reader to try to glean what the other person is saying, how the story is progressing, from Agnes’s reaction. Sometimes that reaction is bizarre, sometimes it is not true, sometimes her words are so beautiful it is almost poetry.

An example, as Agnes expresses her disappointment when editor Justine won’t murder her: “It’s clear now that Justine is not who was supposed to kill me. What a misfortune. She’s a boss. She makes decisions. She doesn’t like me. But I was wrong. But I was thrilling. But then why am I so sick? Why am I alone? My head is bad, I’m liver-ill, and my smell is eels and onions.”

Newton’s writing is generally amusing and often quite funny.

The book, however, can be confusing. Why Agnes wants to be murdered is not made clear.

She makes references to aging and being alone and being replaceable. There’s a hint that she is 34 — Agnes says there’s one moonless night a month, and she’s had 408 moonless nights in her life — hardly an advanced age. But the story opens with her in a SoulCycle class, literally trying to work her butt off, worrying about the bruising round her mouth from injectables.

Agnes moves in a world of famous, accomplished people, surrounded by beauty, by designer clothing and goods and culture. Her father is a famous actor and her mother a model. Agnes namedrops famous people the family knows: Madonna, Kathleen Turner, Alexa Chung, Charlotte Rampling, Mia Farrow. Yet there is a sense of pretention and vacuousness to her life.

Is a spoiler alert needed on a book whose title declares the character trying to be murdered lives? No need, as it remains unclear in the end if Agnes succeeds in her goal.

Julie Carl is a freelance journalist who lives in Toronto.