The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

He is her husband. She is his captive.

Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn’t like what he sees, she is punished.

For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting…

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When this novel was first published in 2021, I was in two minds about reading it.  I was intrigued by the blurb, but while I adored Dean’s debut novel, Dark Pines, I couldn’t get into the follow up, Red Snow, at all.  But I decided to take a punt when I saw it on offer, and while the subject matter makes it difficult to say that I enjoyed it, I found it to be a compelling read. 

In The Last Thing to Burn, we meet Jane, although that is not her real name, and just what her “husband” likes to call her.  We quickly learn that she is the captive of Lenn, and that she has no privacy, autonomy, or any power to make her own decisions. How she ended up in this situation is revealed over the course of the novel as we learn more about her past and how she came to the UK with her sister under false promises.  It’s impossible not to sympathise with the character and her circumstances.  She has already endured so much when we meet her – and I liked the way that she gradually reveals more of her past with the reader – and it’s clear that there’s no end in sight.  Indeed, one wonders whether escape is even possible as Lenn always seems to have the upper hand.

Given the nature of the novel it is, by necessity, a little slow in pace and repetitive in places.  Lenn is an individual who likes routine – lunch is always the same (pre-sliced cheese and ham on white bread), and he likes certain meals on specific days of the week, just like his mum used to make.  Rather than being an irritant, I found that this repetition really brought home the monotony of Jane’s life and the seeming futility of trying to battle against her captor.  Jane’s life is monotonous, with each day mirroring the last and little chance for anything new to happen on the next.  It’s an horrific situation and more than any person should have to endure, and yet she keeps going, showing herself to be stronger than she knows. 

While we get to know about Jane and her past, Dean has chosen to leave out Lenn’s perspective and leave him open to interpretation. I didn’t particularly want his perspective, which I’m sure would include traditional views on a woman’s role in the home or that he’s somehow doing this for her own benefit, but he did still manage to surprise me in some ways. He’s a relatively calm man and doesn’t outwardly manifest any anger that he might be feeling, nor does he drink alcohol regularly. Everything he does is considered, controlled, and planned, and I think that this made him all the more terrifying. While someone prone to anger and who could be manipulated into a heightened emotional state might make a mistake in the heat of the moment, Jane has no such luck with Lenn, and must find other ways to move against him in order to escape.

The title of the novel refers to one of the punishments that Lenn likes to use when Jane is not behaving as he thinks she ought.  One by one, he has taken the few possessions that she arrived with and burned them.  While it may not seem like much, for someone who has so little of her own – even the clothes she now wears belonged to Lenn’s mother – these few belongings are everything to her and the last physical reminders of the life that she was taken from.  This burning of her possessions becomes something of a metaphor for the gradual erosion of her identity, and she understandably clings on to the last vestiges of self as Lenn grinds her down, shoehorning her into his image of the ideal woman – an image which closely resembles his own mother to an uncomfortable degree.

Going into this, you should be aware that it includes elements of human trafficking and physical abuse, although not gratuitously so.  And for anyone who is squeamish about dentistry, there is one scene in particular that you may not enjoy.  Despite this, it’s a compelling if harrowing read, and while I did have a few niggles with the story, I also felt an overwhelming need to know whether Jane would finally manage to escape from Lenn and the life she has had forced on her.  The Last Thing to Burn is a dark and poignant novel highlighting modern slavery and what some are forced to endure at the hands of others.