Wow, do we have a treat for readers today. On a recent road trip (to see the rest of the Squad!), Emily and Mary listened to the new book by Riley Sager, Survive the Night. The novel focuses on Charlie Jordan, who needs to get out of town as quickly as possible following the death of her roommate and best friend, Maddie. Charlie uses a rideshare bulletin board (oh yeah, it’s 1991) to find Josh, a lonely college student looking for a companion on a road trip of his own. Charlie quickly begins to question if Josh could be the infamous Campus Killer as she plots her escape.
(Spoilers for Survive the Night to follow.)
Mary: So Emily, do you want to tell us a little bit about Riley Sager and his work, since you’ve actually read some of his other novels?
Emily: I would not say I’m a Riley Sager expert or anything. Like you said, I’ve read one of his novels, Final Girls, which Kelli and I actually reviewed for the blog way back when. In fact, it was so long ago, I think it’s on our old, now-defunct blog? His real name is Todd Ritter, but let’s be real, he’s going by Riley Sager because it sounds vaguely feminine. And we all know psychological thrillers written by women sell like Gone Girl. That’s about all I’ve got. I know a lot of people have read his other novels, but I have not. So… sorry if you were hoping for a deep dive into Sager’s writing style or recurring themes. You ain’t gonna find it from me.
Mary: You know, I can’t help but think that his pen name is a way to sell to women, too, and that really bothers me. It seems...disingenuous? I know there are plenty of women who write under masculine-sounding pen names because of bias in publishing, but using a feminine pen name to enter into one of the most women-dominated genres is kind of gross to me.
More important than Sager’s gender or writing ability are the issues covered in the novel. Let’s talk about mental illness. Woof, it’s a doozy.
Early in the novel, Charlie talks about these small, round orange pills she’s taking. Obviously we looked up what that might be and discovered it’s Klonopin, a drug I’ve seen used to treat anxiety. While I’m sure that Klonopin, like any medicine, has its share of nasty side effects, I’ve known lots of people who have taken it and, you know, not wildly hallucinated and lost the ability to distinguish reality and fiction. Survive the Night definitely stigmatized mental illness by insinuating that Charlie’s daydreams (the “movies in her head”) were hallucinations brought on by some sort of mental illness.
Emily: Yes, I too have taken Klonopin before. I’ve also taken Xanax and Zoloft and Prozac and Valium and guess what? I can absolutely discern fantasy from reality. These aren’t the kinds of drugs a person is prescribed if they’re having intense hallucinogenic episodes. And even if a person is hallucinating, this is not how hallucinations work. It’s incredibly irresponsible to just make up a mental health problem that isn’t based on any kind of research or sensitivity. And also it’s really lazy writing.
Riley Sager thinking about writing well-developed women characters.
Mary: Lazy is a good way to put it. Mental illness (and especially medicated mental illness) is stigmatized enough without new work being made to villainize it even more. I also thought, had he not like...Googled Klonopin? Even the least amount of due diligence would have solved a lot of the issues I have with the book.
And honestly, I’m impressed Charlie was as put together as she was. If my best friend had been murdered by a serial killer and I had no support system in place, I’d be a mess, too. Good job, Charlie.
Emily: Right. Aside from the “movies in her head,” Charlie seems to be doing mostly okay. But I’m not done complaining about how badly mental illness was represented in this novel. There was seriously a point in the novel where Charlie thinks to herself, “Maybe I’m losing my mind. Some women do lose grip on reality like that.” Like… if you weren’t sure this book was written by a man, now you can be completely certain. Charlie is now completely gaslighting herself and brushing off her paranoia by thinking to herself “LOL I’m such a silly woman.” Offense taken, Riley Sager. Offense taken.
Mary: Big offense taken. I think as we were listening to it, you said, “Tell me this book was written by a man without telling me this book was written by a man.” Really, I might have taken it completely differently if she’d have said “I know people sometimes lose their grip on reality.” Like sure, this is a thing that happens, but there’s no need to act like it only happens to women.
I would say that maybe the setting of the book has something to do with problematic gender stuff, but the 90s were full of girl power and badass women. It’s not like the 90s were the 50s.
Pretty early in the book, you said that you thought Maddie wasn’t real, and I was completely on board. Her over-the-top old Hollywood voice and vintage clothing made her seem so quirky as if to be fake. Yet, I guess she was real.
Women we were looking up to in the 90s.
Emily: Yeah, so we learn pretty early on that Charlie is obsessed with movies, especially a lot of old ones. So when her friend Maddie pops up and is basically just a cardboard cutout version of a 1950s-60s screen heroine, I was like, well, this is clearly Charlie’s imaginary friend. No one in really life looks like that, acts like that, dresses like that, talks like that… I just had so many problems with this character.
Speaking of characters we called out early on, I also had huge issues with Robbie, Charlie’s boyfriend. Right away, we’re told that he’s super hot and also has big brains. And he also seems really nice and sensitive to what Charlie is going through. So obviously there had to be a catch. It was pretty clear to both of us that Robbie was the real serial killer super early in the book. Thoughts on this and the other “twists” in the novel?
Mary: Boy oh boy, Robbie. He’s kind of too perfect to be real, right? The killer is always going to be someone who seems perfect, so Robbie wasn’t a huge shock. There were plenty of twists in Survive the Night, but the only one that really surprised me was Maddie’s grandmother, who captures Charlie to pry information about Maddie’s killer out of her. In retrospect, I should have expected the grandma to get involved, since she plays such a big role in Maddie’s backstory. Sigh.
You mentioned while we were listening that it’s okay if a novel is predictable, which I think this one is, but it has to deliver the content well. There’s something almost comforting about a thriller that’s easy to predict, because you’re just along for the wild ride. To me, Survive the Night wasn’t delivered well. The stigma surrounding mental illness and the obsession with film really ruined it for me, to be honest.
We haven’t really talked much about Charlie’s love of film. She’s a film major, right? She watches old movies all the time and has an encyclopedic knowledge of movies. That’s cool and all, and I'm sure we all know someone like that, but it really fell flat in the novel. I couldn’t tell if Sager was trying to say, in a heavy handed way, that movies are bad, or if it was just a schtick to avoid having to actually, you know, develop Charlie as a character. What did you think?
Emily: Well I guess this is a good time to mention the twist of all twists: this whole book has been a movie. Which I guess should have been obvious because each chapter starts with a scene heading to explain where we are. For instance, “INT. DINER - NIGHT.” Or whatever.
But yes, this whole book has been a movie version of what actually happened to Charlie in real life. So that means some of the “wilder” details, like the lodge setting on fire, were created for drama for the “movie.” What’s really funny is that Charlie goes to see the movie, and after is like, “Eh, that was kind of okay, I guess.” Which I guess to the reader is supposed to be funny because we just read that whole book, and I’m sure Sager wants us to respond, “OKAY?! THAT WAS A WILD RIDE!” But like… I agree with “real” Charlie here. At best, this was kind of okay.
So with that in mind, what is Sager trying to say about movies? Uh… not much, really. I just feel like he’s trying to be cute here with the movie references and didn’t think that much about what he was trying to say. What did you think of this reveal at the end?
Mary: I hated it. Sometimes, this type of ending really works for me, like in The Outsiders, but here it really didn’t. More than the movie reveal, I really hated that Charlie just sort of...got with Josh in the end? I mean, really?! He kidnapped you, told you he was a serial killer in order to manipulate you, threatened you, and then you married him?! That’s too much for me to believe, even in this book. I gave this book a 1 on Goodreads and I don’t regret that. How’d you feel about Charlie marrying her captor and riding off into the sunset?
Emily: I don’t think we’ve stressed enough just how much this book was clearly written by a man. This ending is something only a man would write. I also just had so many problems with Josh’s actions throughout the book, knowing that it was a man writing about this man gaslighting a woman, without ever really doing anything in his book that’s close to commenting about how women experience this kind of gaslighting all the time in real life. And the fact that Charlie at many points had red flags pointing her dead in the face, and she continued to stay in the car with this guy? Again, no, women do not act this way and do not think this way. From a very young age, we’re used to having to watch out for predatory men, and there’s just no way a woman would get in a car with a strange man and STAY there, especially after her friend had just been murdered and she knew she could be the next target! The amount of mental gymnastics Sager had to do with this character to keep her in the car was truly shocking.
So yeah, in other words, I don’t feel great about her marrying this guy at the end of the book and riding off into the sunset. I feel pretty WTF about that.
I gave this book 2 stars because I kind of enjoyed laughing at how ridiculous it was at parts, but also… this book is so problematic, especially in its depictions of women and mental health. And I cannot get behind that AT ALL.
Mary: Yes, I totally agree about the poorly written women characters. Even if some people do act like Charlie–out of desperation or bad judgment–it just feels wrong for a dude to write about it like this. It felt...kind of insulting? I don’t regret reading this book because, let’s be real, it was free for me and a good time listening to it with you, but like...c’mon Sager. Do better.
Bye, Riley.