Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
True stories of death and desperation. One survivor chooses loneliness. One chooses exile. One chooses oblivion.
Some have violent tendencies, ruining lives indiscriminately. Some seal their own fate in slow motion; others do so in the blink of an eye.
In The Survivors, award-winning true-crime writer Steve Braunias retells twelve mysteries of human nature - unusual stories of how people choose to survive their own lives, and their decisions, desires, impulses... and failings.
“For thousands of years, we’ve made up stories about things largely because we haven’t understood them,” says Dr Alex Bartle in the twelfth and final chapter of Steve Braunias’s superb collection of true stories, The Survivors. The Christchurch sleep medicine specialist is talking specifically about the writings and theories of Volker Pilgrim, who feared vampires stealing his sleep, and whose fascinating story bookends The Survivors, with Braunias describing Pilgrim late on as “the governing principle of the entire book, the exemplar of surviving your own life on your own terms”.
But the timeless idea of reaching for stories to explain the unknown, seeking to understand our world and varied lives moving through it, surviving on our own terms or otherwise, applies broadly.
Steve Braunias is a heck of a storyteller, and The Survivors is a fascinating collection that draws us into lives that have attracted Braunias’s curiosity. There’s a troubled French exchange student, unlucky in love, who vanished while going to collect black sands as a souvenir for his mother. Another tale: two hardworking Chinese migrants eking out meagre existences in bleak bedsits, sacrificing to send money home, only for a misunderstanding to lead to a homicide trial. A would-be arsonist who burned himself alive, having been manipulated by a femme fatale who only faced justice due to a wedding planner turned tenacious detective. A getaway driver for a cop killer.
Summaries don’t do the stories justice; each is soaked in small details, acute observations. Many arise from Braunias’s court reporting, his desire to write about real crimes ‘as a kind of literature’. Chapter 5, ‘Zones of Interest’ is one of the most affecting, as Braunias grapples with his own role as voyeur of horrors inflicted on others, as he reads and takes notes from a 42-volume set of Nuremberg trial transcripts. “The volumes are demonic, a collection of bad spells for extermination.”
While The Survivors digs into some extremely dark areas of humanity, it never reads as too bleak. There are many moments of humanity and light. Braunias confesses he was “among the worst in the business” at traditional court reporting, with its focus on news, total accuracy, and distilling the day’s events. Instead, he was “immediately attracted to the background music of every trial – high comedy, low awfulness, the songs of death”. But now he says he’s putting away his true crime pen.
This will be his final such book. It’s a fitting swansong.
[This review was first written for Deadly Pleasures magazine in the United States]
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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