Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf (book review).

Bubble City. The place you go to be someone. To be known. A place where clones of celebrities walk endless circuits of the fashion district wearing the latest designs. Where a clone of the same celebrity parties with friends at the hottest party of the night. While another updates all the social media and another raises children with her childhood sweetheart, and another tries all the hobbies to find a hidden talent. The industry that is movie star Lulabelle Rock could not function without her twelve clones.

Now, to continue her movie career after a flop, Lulabelle needs one more clone. Because it’s not murder for a clone to kill another clone, and think of the publicity!

I can almost understand why someone might want a clone. You could see all the variations in your life when all those things we dream about but we just don’t have time or if I’d chosen differently. Who doesn’t think about that sort of thing when lying awake at 3 in the morning? But if a clone has those experiences, are they yours? The clones can’t come back and upload their memories to their creator. As I’m sure most of us have noticed, life is hard enough.

I loved the first half of this book where Clone 13, the Assassin, goes out into the world for the first time and meets people, but mostly herself. The night-time city setting gave me ‘Blade Runner’ vibes, which fit nicely with the Assassin’s moral confusion about the whole exercise.

Only Lulabelle and Spencer, her agent, are known by their names. Even when the other non-Lulabelle characters are introduced, they, like the clones, are given an archetype, e.g., the Hitchhiker and the Viking.

She’s only three days old. Maybe she is just really bad at names. Maybe she can only work within these defined patterns to cope with the world and what she has been created to do in it.

The recurrent motifs of tarot give the novel a mythic feel. This is Lulabelle Rock’s ‘Odyssey.’ The repeating appearances of the few non-Lulabelle characters add to this feeling. The Designer. The Hitchhiker. The Photographer. Each has their place in the Assassin’s story, but they are simply islands on her voyage. Archetypes from a newly created tarot, perhaps. Each is designed to move the Assassin along her journey. Each there to make her question things, not just the big questions of ‘is this actually murder?’ or ‘are these people me?’ but also the small ‘what flavour of ice cream is best?’

The second half, while still enjoyable, leans into the reasons behind the Assassin’s creation. Which I didn’t really care about. ‘Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock’ is more about the journey than the destination. Any revelation at the denouement is not a destination but a pause on a path forward that is already known.

Clearly, the answer to too many clones is to add another clone. A premise that made me laugh out loud while not being comedic. Author Maud Woolf skirts the edge of zany without coming close, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s literary or not because, again, it walks that fine line. Many books about clones seek to solve that clone’s murder, such as Mur Lafferty’s ‘Six Wakes,’ but ‘Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock’ flips that stereotype. If you’re looking for an intellectual read on the lighter side, try this one out.

LK Richardson

February 2024

(pub: Angry Robot, 2024. 242 page enlarged paperback. Price: $18.99 (US). ISBN: 978-1-91520-290-1)

Buy it from https://amzn.to/49OlcR1 or check out website: https://angryrobotbooks.my.canva.site/lulabelle-rock