\*Idaho\* is a strange and haunting book, one strength of which is that it appears completely unconcerned with what actually \*did\* occur, and much more interested in exploring what \*might\* have occurred, and if so, what that might have meant.
To a reader who approached this story as a mystery, it would be frustrating beyond belief as Ruskovich refuses to ever actually answer the big questions (WHY, Jenny? And what happened to June?). I started to get a sense of that when I perused the reviews on Goodreads and saw a number of readers debating plot points and advancing alternative theories about what really happened to May. Intriguingly, some posited that Jenny did not kill May at all – that actually June had killed her, or even Wade, and that Jenny allowed herself to be scapegoated due to her love of them. Some offered textual basis for this (e.g. June saying to May in an apparently offhand manner that “I could kill you”, or the passage in which the bloodhound reacts to the unnamed man in the search who smells of hate and terror) but details were very light and I found myself tantalised – *what are other people seeing here that I am missing?*
I don’t wish to spoil this beautiful novel by dissecting the plot, but I am intrigued as to whether anyone else has read it and had similar theories they might like to discuss here.
For myself, I was satisfied by Ann’s theory – whether or not it was true, it provided the only explanation I think we were ever going to get for why Jenny did what she did in that moment.
by Sweeper1985