Toto Amongst The Murderers – Sally J Morgan

READ FOR NZ BOOK AWARDS

● In the 1970s, at age 21, Sally J Morgan was hitchhiking in Yorkshire and was offered a lift by Fred and Rosemary West. This close call inspired her novel Toto Amongst The Murderers, in which the protagonist, Toto, is fond and completely unafraid of hitchhiking despite not always attracting people with the right intentions.

Toto has graduated from art school, living in an undesirable area in Yorkshire and takings risks as she lives wildly, happy to not know where her life is heading. As she does so there are growing reports about attacks on women and slowly the violence creeps closer to her home and to her.

Nel began calling me Toto when we were flatting together as students in Sheffield. It started as a joke because of my surname and it stuck because she thinks I’ve got the same lack of concern for consequences as that little dog from The Wizard Of Oz. According to her I’m always running off without warning, stealing wizards’ sausages and biting witches’ legs. She thinks someday one of those witches will bite me back.

This is an exploration of the time when Fred and Rosemary West were skulking around the streets offering lifts to strangers and the Yorkshire Ripper was predating on young women. As such it looks at the female experience in relation to relationships, and fears over safety. But also, self worth and self preservation and friendships that enable positivity.

Toto is a good character. She has a bit of Holden Caulfield about her, wandering aimlessly, in search of something she’s not quite sure of. But Holden didn’t have to worry about getting raped or murdered and this is an important point of this story, that as women we want to go about our lives as men are able but have to have a constant fear about our safety in the back of our minds.

The setting is atmospheric. I haven’t been to Yorkshire but I’ve seen several readers credit Morgan with re-creating a true to life ’70s Yorkshire. The language is lyrical, however it was the plot, the message and Toto herself that kept me intrigued. I can understand why this did not make the NZ Book Awards shortlist, but am glad it made the longlist. – Rachel

Published 2020
JM Originals
352 pages