I Must Confess

Between 1980 and 1995, anonymous callers in New York could leave voice messages on an answering machine known as the Apology Line. The recorded regrets were fascinating and sometimes terrifying, from a woman who was sorry for being white, rich, and female to men who admitted to mugging and even murder. The Apology Project, the brainchild of the conceptual artist Allan Bridge, tapped into the need to share, to feel heard, and to be absolved. It also revealed the dark weight of secret offences, and the cost to the confessor.

A similar sense of morbid curiosity drives Zsuzsi Gartner’s debut novel, The Beguiling. Lucy, the first-person narrator, develops the ability to draw confessions from strangers, neighbours, anyone after her beloved cousin Zoltán’s death. (He commits suicide following a bizarre event in which he is buried alive by a mysterious gathering of women.) Wherever Lucy goes, people approach her, speaking in “Mandarin, Oji-Cree, American Sign...