Although I differ with some blurbs I've read calling NOTES ON AN EXECUTION a thriller, I do agree that this book is excellent. And, although I think the couple lines of Danya Kukafka's antiracist comments (inserted as a character's thoughts) contained in this book are unnecessary, NOTES ON AN EXECUTION is undeniably great in its thoughtfulness. It's a five-star read.

The lives of not only a condemned man but, also, of the women crucial to his life are explored right from his beginning. While I disagree with Kukafka that people romanticize a serial killer and forget his victims, NOTES ON AN EXECUTION is the most thoughtful and maybe even the most interesting exploration of their lives and feelings that I've read.

But there is more to this book: Kukafka grabs a reader's attention with her presentation of the stories. Her organization is, I think, why some people call NOTES ON AN EXECUTION a thriller. It really isn't, but the order in which the stories are presented does add tension.

Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka, author; Mozhan Marno, Jim Meskimen, narrators
When the novel opens, we meet Ansel, son of Lavender and Johnny Packer. He is a condemned man, sentenced to die for terrible crimes. Yet, he believes he is worthy of being forgiven. He believes that he is not only someone bad, he is also someone who can be good. He is only hours away from being strapped to a gurney and the end of his life. He does not want to die. Yet, he did not think about the way his victims felt about living.
Ansel’s mom Lavender, ran away with Johnny Packer when she was only 16. She soon became a mother, giving birth to Ansel in a barn, on a stack of hay, and four years after, she had another son. During this time, she discovered that the sweet, gentle Johnny that she loved, had a very ugly side. He had a very controlling, violent and cruel nature. He was abusive and kept her a virtual prisoner for five years, at the farm they moved to after they married. She finally escaped by tricking him, but in the process, abandoned her four year old son with her two month old baby. Ansel tried to comfort his screaming, hungry brother, until the police came to rescue them, prompted by the 911 call that she made from a gas station. Ansel was unable to quiet the child. He could not feed him. Social Services told him that his brother had died. Alone for hours, the experience left him with recurrent nightmares, awake and asleep, in which he heard the child screaming. Although Lavender thought she was saving her children from a very abusive husband and sending them to a better life, one has to wonder, if it was the right choice. The children went straight into foster care. For Lavender, though, she had no other choice. She did not drive, and she was being beaten and starved, along with her son. Now there were two children. What horror awaited them if she stayed? Johnny’s influence on Ansel was already one of violence. Her influence on him, was one of love, and he never understood her disappearance. Did this shape the future man he became?
Ansel bounced from foster home to foster home, never quite managing to fit in comfortably. In one home, he met Saffy, an interracial child. She was sometimes bullied because of the color of her skin. She fancied Ansel. They were both 11. One day, she caught him being cruel to animals, and he punished her horribly for witnessing his depravity. She became so ill because of him, that she was transferred to a different home. She will reappear in his life, later on, though, and help the reader to better understand the dynamics of his life and how it came to end. She becomes a police investigator and is involved with the investigation of the murder of three missing girls. This brings her back to Ansel.
Ansel’s personality alternated between charismatic and cruel. His behavior toward animals was telling. He liked to torture bugs. He sometimes seemed compelled to acts of great cruelty and violence. He hoped that violence would silence the screams he kept hearing in his head and bring him peace. It did not, even after the murders of the innocent young girls. He could never really explain why he killed those girls. Afterward, however, he thought that what he did was bad, but wasn’t he also good? Time passed, he was not caught and while studying philosophy in college, he met Jenny, Hazel’s twin sister, and he seemed to change. Jenny centered him, but soon, she too, abandoned him. He hated his loneliness and the sound of the screaming infant. Nothing gave him peace. Hazel remembered seeing Ansel dig a hole in their yard, the night he gave Jenny a ring and they became engaged. What was he burying? After Jenny’s death, she went back to discover what was in the ground. The loss of a twin is devastating.
Ansel lived for a time in the Blue House, helping the two women who lived there. Who was Blue Harrison? Why was she so important to Ansel? What did Ansel yearn for, but find so hard to achieve? He wanted to feel real emotion, to be part of a family. Why was he unable to get truly close to people?
As the story unfolds, Ansel’s sad life is unraveled. The wanderings of his sick mind is sometimes similar to the thoughts others have, so what separates them is that Ansel acts out while others control their passion and their thoughts when they grow outrageous. Ansel kept a journal, writing down his philosophy about his life. He hoped the world would one day see it and help others like him, and perhaps understand what was wrong with him.
Ansel did not want to die, although he had willfully taken the lives of others without guilt. In his mind, they existed merely to stop his pain, and he had no further thought about them. However, he thought, he didn’t want to be bad; he just could not help himself, but he believed he had been good and could be again. One time, when his evil escaped notice, he tried to get help, but he was ignored. The way he looked at those times, frightened people. Saffy was one of the few who recognized and understood his danger.
Would he have been different if he had, had a normal family? He simply did not feel the same emotions as others did, although he wanted to feel them. He felt no remorse when he was violent, beyond the feeling of shame afterwards, shame for his behavior and his confusion about why he was the way he was, but not for what he was actually doing to others. He manipulated people. He had not been a handsome baby, but he grew into his own good looks. He had a way about him that would captivate people and warm them to him, but just as easily he could drive them away. Was he born evil or was he made evil by his life? Could he have chosen a different path? Sometimes it did seem that if a different choice had been made, he would not have taken the fork in the road that led him to become a killer.
Were Ansel’s mental problems even treatable. If his mom had not abandoned him, would he have become a serial killer? From the youngest of ages he displayed a proclivity for violence. Could that have been weaned from his persona when he was young?
Ansel was tortured by the screams of his brother, when he committed an act of violence was it in retribution for his abandonment or a search for a cure for his pain? What else was he searching for besides silence and the feeling of acceptance? He always wondered why his mother had simply disappeared. Did that make him the monster he became, or did the father’s mental illness now inhabit his own mind? Although Ansel’s crimes were heinous, and he deserved punishment, right up until the end he wished to be saved from himself, even as he was planning his escape with Shawna, the prison guard. Ansel felt he had power over women. His mind was sick, but was his problem misogyny? Were all of Saffy’s issues caused by racism, or perhaps was it caused by disobeying orders? What were the real implications of her boss’s behavior when she caught her with the Captain?
Although this novel also attempts to highlight our unfair justice system, the mistreatment of women, economic inequality and racist effects on our lives, I felt those points were artificially created, just to be included as the author attempts to tie everything up in a neat little bundle, condemning our justice system that is unforgiving, blind and deaf, cruel and sadistic for doing to him what they are punishing him for doing to others. However, which is worse, his crime of taking the lives of others or taking his life in retribution? Was poverty and a lack of connection to anyone or anyplace, the reason he was without a moral compass? Although he killed without any backward glance, and he did not anticipate dying, why did he have no sympathy for his victims? They were almost unreal to him. What was missing from his nature? Why did he take a keepsake from his victims? Did it have something to do with the locket his mom had once given him as a kind of amulet? What did Shawna see in Ansel? Yes, she was lonely, but he was a cold-blooded killer and she trusted him and believed in his innocence. Why did she want to help him and risk her own future? What made her so naïve? Finally, if Lavender had stayed, would the children have survived? Would they have been better off? Could she have helped Johnny who never gave a backward glance once she called 911. Could she have rescued herself and her children in any other way than the way she chose? Was her upbringing a factor in the choices she made that doomed her? Ansel believed that no one was all bad or all good. Was he correct? Does one trait overshadow the other? Is this book about the making of a monster or the idea of forgiving a monster? Is retribution the best thing to achieve or would rehabilitation have been possible? Were the chances taken worth it?