Danya Kukafka: “Notes from an Execution”: The perpetrator as a supporting character

There are a lot of stories about serial killers in literature and film and they seem to have a certain fascination. But it is not uncommon for the male perpetrators to be portrayed as disguised geniuses, such as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs” or sometimes ironically as in the series “Dexter”.

The stories of the female victims and how much they are missing from other people’s lives hardly play a role in the narratives of the culture industry. Things are completely different in Danya Kukafka’s extraordinary novel “Notes on an Execution.” The 32-year-old New York author, who studied creative writing with Colson Whitehead, not only talks about the serial killer Ansel Packer, who murders several women and runs around for decades as a ticking time bomb until he strikes again. Kukafka’s novel is primarily about the stories of the women who are confronted with the perpetrator over the years. She doesn’t paint a flat or one-dimensional picture of the man in his mid-forties sitting on death row, whose entire life story is told, from socially marginalized white trash America to various foster families and a failed marriage. Much more space in this novel is given to the biographies of the three women who repeatedly have to do with Ansel Packer and whose lives are shaped by his actions.

On the one hand, there is Ansel’s mother Lavender, who flees the brutality of her redneck husband and leaves her small child alone on a run-down farm with her infant brother. It’s about her early marriage, her escape to a Californian women’s commune and the long, painful work of facing her own responsibility.

Then there is Hazel, whose twin sister is married to Ansel and who inadvertently becomes an important witness for later investigations. It is led by police officer Saffy, who was an orphan with Ansel in a foster family and not only struggles with her trauma from that time. Saffy, who is of Indian origin, is constantly exposed to racist and sexist hostility from her mostly male colleagues at her workplace.

“Notes on an Execution” is rather an empowering and extremely exciting book right up to the last page, which counteracts the story of the perpetrator with the agency of women.

“Notes on an Execution” expands on the life stories of these three women, and it’s not just about the murderer or the crimes as a unifying element, even if that is of course the center of the story. In this novel, Danya Kukafka writes about teenage longings, sexual desire, inability to have relationships, failed life plans, drug careers, working life, personal hopes, deep-seated fears and the recurring fight for survival.

Family belonging and the disruptive breaks associated with this story become the central motifs of this book. Saffy is also looking for her father, whom she has never met, just as Ansel’s memory of his mother is barely retrievable. In the 350 pages of this literary dense text, the author packs a surprising amount of plot from the various, artfully linked narrative strands from the lives of these three women.

In between, we always go to death row and the execution of the title. The remaining hours until then are counted down like a countdown, while Ansel Packer self-pityingly reviews his life and continually reads his rather low-level manifesto about good and evil. He always asks himself the question: What would have happened if he had not committed an act at certain moments? Saffy, who was a close friend of one of the victims, also continually plays out this option. How would the biographies of these three women have developed?

At the end, these fictional life stories are also briefly touched upon and played through as if in an epilogue. Danya Kukafka avoids victimizing her characters. “Notes on an Execution” is rather an empowering and extremely exciting book right up to the last page, which counteracts the story of the perpetrator with the agency of women.

Danya Kukafka: Notes on an Execution, Blumenbar-Verlag, 348 pages, hardcover, €22.

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