Leave Past Mysteries Alone

The Midnight Club by Margot Harrison (2024) – “You are formally invited to a reunion of the Midnight Brunch Club…” Decades after the tragic death of a member of their group, a set of college friends are reunited in the town where it all began. Through the use of a mysterious concoction that the locals call “sog”, they delve into their memories of that time. They hope to finally put to rest the questions around the death, but soon discover that those are not the only secrets revealed.

Why I Liked It – The story winds itself tighter and tighter as each member begins to focus on their own issues surrounding their lives at the time of the mysterious death.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The central concept of returning to a place that was central to your life years before to face an unanswered question is one that grabs me. It’s nostalgia mixed with a mystery and that’s a combination that works well.

Jennet Stark was one of the members of the Midnight Brunch Club at a small college in Vermont in the late 1980’s. The group came together through the college literary magazine. There was Auraleigh, with the personality that drew every eye in any room she entered, Paul, her intellectual boyfriend and editor of the magazine. Sonia, the quiet, shy write who was just happy to be included. Byron, a multi-millionaire now, whose family disintegrated around him while he made his millions. His great love had been Jennet back in the day. Each of them has memories, questions, and fears about the night that Jennet died. It was ruled a suicide. None of them ever understood why Jennet did what she did. Twenty-five years later, Auraleigh invites them all back to remember and explore that night.

There was a “myth” among the locals in Dunstan about a concoction that allows you to step through time. Young folks might see glimpses of their future, older folks could see the past. It’s called “sog”, and as with anything that plays with time, it comes with dangers of its own.

The story is told through three avenues, simple story telling, voluntary memories, and involuntary memories, the ones that come from sessions with sog. The last category gives glimpses of what happened before. Things change as the four friends explore if they can guide them. What they find in the end will destroy some of their firmly held feelings about the past and each other. But it may also offer a closure about the events of the death.

I will admit that it took a chapter or two to get into the rhythm of Harrison’s story telling. Leaping back and forth between the reunion, and the college days (through two different lenses) threw me a little. Given my affection for non-linear storytelling, I’m not sure why that was. The relationships between the characters are filled in gradually. Each of the four central people felt like folks I’d known in my own life. Paul, who retires into his intellectual shell, and Auraleigh, the extrovert that is compelled to order and organize everything and everyone around her. Sonia is Auraleigh’s mirror image. Still too shy to ask Paul for an introduction to people in their shared professional sphere at a moment when she desperately needs that boost. And Byron, who has spent his life trying to make up for mistakes he barely realized he made. The past weighs heavily on them all.

I’m going to predict that this book makes it onto my end of year list of the best books I’ve read this year.

Rating – **** Recommended