This novel is what historical fiction based on real lives should be but often isn't: not just a fictionalized retelling of real events but a true and fearless re-imagining of them. Schmidt honors known fact about Lizzie Borden, her family, and the crime that made her infamous, as well as accurately capturing the small details of 19th=century life. From this foundation she builds a genuinely memorable novel that stands on its own merits as art. Bold, compelling, and suspenseful—no mean feat given how much is known about the subject—the book creates its own strange and vivid world, a place at once familiar and alien. The striking voice, the elegant shaping of narrative, the striking and convincing characterizations: it's all gorgeously done. This novel will not be to everyone's taste: it is, obviously, a very dark tale and one touched by violence at many points even beyond the famous murder. But it is an extraordinary, and memorable, read, and I recommend it with high praise.

The writing was great but I did not like the book. I put it down for several days at a time before I picked it up again. Schmidt's writing appeals to al, of the senses. I will probably attempt another book by her in the future. I think I just could not relate to this story which made it hard to enjoy.

I live in RI about 45 minutes from the Lizzy Borden House and have always wanted to learn more about what happened in this doomed home. This book give excellent insight into the minds of those that were there and told the story well. Being a therapist, I still wonder what Lizzy's mental condition was. Over 100 years later, we still are left wondering if she did it or not and the story is very compelling!

An incredible re-imagining of one of the most gruesome and famous murders to ever excite the tabloid press. This book explores all the questions that were never satisfactorily answered by the original investigation, and provides some deeply chilling answers. This is an entirely fictional account, but there are many times when you become so immerse in the story that it feels incredibly real.

3.5/5
I loved the multiple narratives. It was a great story but I truly wanted more on the trial and how Emma and Lizzie really got though it all. The ending seemed rushed.

I find the story of Lizzie Borden fascinating but this version not so much. The introduction of the arbitrary characters, John and Benjamin, really don't add to the story. If anything, they lend to a more disjointed story.

Writing about real events can be such a trap--the writer has to decide how far into historical detail she wants to go. How far into the thoughts and perceptions of the world at the time is she willing to go? Because no matter how detailed and accurate your historical portrayal may be, the twenty-first century will always slip in somehow.

I recently finished watching The Lizzie Borden Chronicles on Netflix and couldn't believe my luck when I was approved on Netgalley for See What I Have Done.

Having watched the mini series with Christina Ricci (Lizzie Borden) and Clea DuVall (Emma Borden), I found this book to be an accurate depiction of the dysfunction in their relationship with each other and their parents as well. For those who need something to fill the void until this book is released in August, I'd highly recommend watching this show!

See What I Have Done brings us a little closer into the Borden household by alternating chapters narrated by several different characters: Lizzie, her sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and a man named Benjamin. I'm particularly drawn to character studies and this is a novel that doesn't disappoint in that area. As the reader gets an intimate look into the thoughts and daily lives of all these people, it's easier to see why things ended in the murder of Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby Borden.

While Lizzie ceases to terrify me, I particularly appreciated the opportunity to hear from her older sister, Emma. There was something heartbreaking about Emma's wish to escape, but her unwillingness to leave for fear of abandoning her sister. The dysfunctional relationship between the two sisters is clear from the very start and there were several times where I just wished I could reach out and shake Emma and tell her to run as far as she could.

Lizzie tucked her chin, couldn't quite look me in the eye. 'Do you still love me?' I hardened: ribs ached, fingers tired, shriveled. It always came down to love. I wanted to say, 'No.' Then, 'Not always,' then, 'Sometimes I wish you were dead.' 'Yes,' I told her. 'I do.'

Schmidt does an amazing job of highlighting the unhealthy relationship between not only Lizzie and Emma, but between both girls and their father as well. Despite being grown women, Lizzie and Emma are ruled by Mr. Borden and at times, it seems more a sense of ingrained responsibility towards him than anything he dictates aloud. Regardless, the feelings of discomfort and unhappiness in the household are palpable and Schmidt's prose makes those uncomfortable feelings even more visceral.

Spikes grew along the back of my ribcage, made me cough, and I took her hand. It was soft like mine. There we were, me and my sister, our bodies inseparable. There is nothing that escapes blood.

For those who like suspenseful, somewhat gruesome plots with a cast of both likable and despicable characters, be prepared to get a copy of this book as soon as it is released in August! Even those who don't know the historical background of the Borden family would easily become absorbed in the novel since it does not require a prior knowledge of the murders. Either way, this is definitely a book I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys an unsettling, psychological thriller regardless of their interest in history.

Thank you, Netgalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for allowing me to read this book prior to its publication in exchange for an honest review!

This is a work of fiction about a real life event. It is about the brutal murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts. Taking her cues from the actual crime timeline, Schmidt weaves a story creating a possible scenario about the events in 1892.
We are told the story from four points of view. Lizzie, whose memories are scattered, jagged and unreliable. Her older sister Emma who seems to surrender to her sister on anything of importance, Bridget, the servant who gives shaky testimony because she is so afraid and a stranger to the whole event, Benjamin, who drifts into the Borden sisters lives at the time of the murder and then years later.
This book is a strange mix of truth and creativity. Sometimes the writing is a confusing mix of madness, but that might just be the writing style used to convey the confusion of the story itself. It is like looking through a keyhole to a mystery and imagining all the possibilities. Going back and forth in time can make it difficult to keep track of everything at times.
Schmidt has written a book that swirls with vividness and assaults the senses. Language twists and turns, creating a storm, making it easy to lose your equilibrium. But in the end there was something so off kilter it threw the whole novel off balance. Some of the possibilities created by Schmidt left me disagreeing vehemently. For someone who knows nothing about this event in history, it wont leave you any clearer about the events that took place and parts of the events were covered in a perfunctory manner and others were overly laboured.
This is sure to be a hit because of the actual topic but it remains to be seen if it has longevity.

SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE BY SARAH SCHMIDT
The storytelling is captivating and riveting. The writing style is different and depending on if you can get used to it or not will determine whether you like the book. It was a little choppy and awkward for me at first, but I was able to get used to it. I thought I knew all the details to this story, but there are a few character's that I did not know about that figure into the story. It reads pretty fast paced.

It is August 4, 1898 in Fall River, MA. It is a loveless household. Abby Borden is Emma and Lizzie's stepmother. Abby is cruel to her stepdaughters. Father whose name is Andrew is also cruel to his two daughters with an explosive temper and a critical voice. Emma is away visiting a relative in Fairhaven. She is the eldest. Lizzie is very dependent on Emma, pathologically dependent. Bridget is their maid who is from Ireland. She has been saving her money in a little box so she can return home. Abby, Lizzie and Emma's stepmother has found Bridget's money and confiscated it.

John is the brother of the first Mrs. Borden, Andrew Borden's first wife who has died. John meets a character named Benjamin who he hires to sort out Andrew Borden. John is Lizzie and Emma's Uncle and he doesn't seem to care for Abby and Andrew Borden and when he shows up the night before (with Benjamin hiding in the barn) he is not treated as a welcome guest. Uncle John tries to get an extra house key from Bridget, but she doesn't have one to give to him. The Borden's keep the doors and windows locked. This retelling of this famous crime is spellbinding and had me questioning what I thought I already knew.

Thank you to Net Galley, Sarah Schmidt and the Publisher for my digital copy in exchange for an honest and fair review.

I wasn’t that familiar with the Lizzie Borden case until I read this book. This made the reading all the more enjoyable to me. While reading the book, I did a lot of research about the fateful day Lizzie Borden took an axe, and separating fact from fiction was fun! What has made this case fascinating over the years is that while Lizzie had the motive and the means, the murder weapon was never recovered. She was acquitted later because of this and went down in history as the heroine of an unsolved murder case. Schmidt also includes a fictional character, Benjamin, into this compelling story, to shed some clarity on what really happened on August 4th.

The writing is grade A. The characters are wonderfully weird. I love me a story about a dysfunctional family and the one in this book is as dysfunctional as they come. Behind closed doors, within the stifling heat of 92 Second Street, is a volatile family. A father who is controlling and a miser, a stepmother who just wanted a normal family, an elder daughter who wants to live life her way, and a younger daughter for who’s craziness no adjective will do justice. The sisters have a codependent, weird relationship. Oh, the things they say to each other!

I’ve had a pretty hectic week, traveling between 3 states for work, and I was only able to read while on the flight. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the book even more if I had been at home–it’s a page-turner and you will not be able to put it down! See What I Have Done is a riveting tale that weaves fiction into a true story. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good crime novel.

In this ambitious imagining of the Lizzie Borden case of 1892, Sarah Schmidt fleshes out the conclusion, which was always assumed, but never proven. The case was a national obsession, when a 30 year old live-at-home daughter from a nice town in Massachusetts axed down her father and step-mother, because famously, the jury decided, a woman was not capable of such a crime.

Looking back at the story from a true crime angle, there was very little for Schmidt to build on. Facts like Lizzie owning pigeons, burning her dress, her considering purchasing Prussic Acid the day before etc. are oft repeated in the Lizzie Borden files but there’s only so much you can do with these bones without creating melodrama. So it was a pleasure to read Schmidt’s take on the emotional and mental state of the presumed killer.

In a Venn diagram of the Lizzie Borden of this book and the real Borden, the circles are probably a good mile apart. The Lizzie we find here is a bouncy woman-child, manipulative and psychopathic and doesn’t ‘look’ much like the black and white photos of the frizzy haired Borden. I always imagined Borden as a cold and calculating killer, someone at the end of her tether, who had just enough distance from herself to hope she wouldn’t be suspected. This is Borden re-loaded, licking droplets of blood off her hand like a cat, laughing hysterically within sight of her murdered step-mother and without much mention of the trial, getting away with it.

As a psychological thriller, it certainly delivers. Schmidt makes Lizzie easy to hate and despise while we root for her sister and the maid throughout. The story is really well built up to include possible motivations for murder from both the maid and a hit-man, but of course, the reader never entertains these as prospects unless we consider that Schmidt intends to derail the story. Of course, Schmidt doesn’t need to tell us, Lizzie did it, but she did need to land the story and she does this well and as stylishly as would be possible. However, because a few ‘red herring’ threads were started to build the story, it would have been nice to have seen these land satisfactorily too. I was a wee-bit miffed that Bridget didn’t get her tin back or than the story ended before the hit man gets into Lizzie’s new house.

One word of advice, don’t let the awkward first few pages distract you. I didn’t know if the maid was meant to be Italian, Caribbean or what when I first started reading and I assumed she was around 60 and that Lizzie was meant to be 14 (for some reason). I did nearly close the book but I’m so glad I didn’t.

This is well-written, meaty, authentic feeling, page-turner of a book and I lost a few hours to it when I should have been sleeping. I imagine, if you knew nothing about Lizzie Borden, then this book would be an even better read. But either way it is a good one.

5 STARS!!
I absolutely loved this book! This was just the kind of weirdness I would want out a story like this. The writing was fantastic and utterly atmospheric. Schmidt captures the senses in such a way that I felt like I was in the sickly hot rooms of the Borden house watching this catastrophe unfold. FANTASTIC!

The idea behind this book was very appealing but the execution needed some work. The characters were well developed - all the characters. It was odd - I knew so much about the maid's history but not so much about Mrs. Borden. The pacing of the book was not so good. In places it really dragged and the abrupt changes in narrators didn't always work for me. At times it was almost distractive which I felt really hurt the flow of the story. I did like the author's writing. Her descriptive scenes were terrific! I had a very clear idea of the house and the characters and the town.

The premise of this book was so intriguing, I was certain I'd love it and was so chuffed when I got an ARC from Netgalley (thanks!), but my gosh, what a slog. To begin with, I loved the beautiful prose but as I got further into the book, it felt like wading through treacle. Nope. Not for me.

"And, lastly, thank you to Lizzie Borden, whoever you are. Thank you for choosing me, but it's time to go now."

I don't always read an author's acknowledgements in their entirety once I finish a book, but this time I did. What I can only assume from reading the above statement from Sarah Schmidt is that the story of Lizzie Borden and the Borden murders completely consumed her, so much so that she had no other choice but to put pen to paper. And that certainly comes across in See What I Have Done. Lizzie's character and presence is as haunting as the story is, consuming us every page, as we delve deeper and deeper into her twisted reality. Just like Schmidt felt she needed to write Lizzie's story, once we open that first page, we feel we have no choice but to keep reading.

On the morning of 4 August 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden calls out to the maid, Bridget, 'Someone’s killed father.’ What unfolds immediately after is a domestic nightmare, a stunning reimagining of one of the most fascinating murder mysteries of all time. The brutal axe-murder of Andrew Borden, the family patriarch, and his second wife, the hated stepmother, forces Lizzie and Emma Borden to revisit and confront the ghosts of their complicated pasts. Shifting among the perspectives of unreliable, vindictive Lizzie, her older sister Emma, their young Irish maid Bridget and the enigmatic and eerie stranger Benjamin, we are forced to watch through our fingers the events of that awful day. While most would wonder why anyone would seek to harm the wealthy and respectful Borden couple, tales from our narrators reveal a deeper and darker story of a house devoid of love; a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond stronger than blood, both desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues which don't seem to exist, we learn more and more about the strange and sinister mind of Lizzie Borden, whose memory of 4 August seems shattered into fragments. We soon start to wonder if we can trust Lizzie at all, as she questions her own whereabouts on that morning: Was she in the barn or in the pear arbour escaping the heat of the house? When did she last see or speak to her stepmother?

See What I Have Done is a triumph in storytelling. It is a deeply unsettling portrait of a damaged and troubled family and a brilliant psychological examination of love, murder, self-identity and independence. The story is character-driven, with the narrative structure proving very effective in delivering a perfectly on-point pace. It also allows us to intermittently take a welcome break from being inside the mind of Lizzie, which soon proves a very troubling and unsettling place to be. The claustrophobic nature of this house and, in turn, this story is remarkable. I found it so difficult to shake the feelings of fear, dread and disgust while reading it. The starkly vivid prose and attention to detail is exceptional, particularly in the way that Schmidt focuses on the olfactory senses and on touch, taste and the mouth. Time and time again we are drawn back to the sweet and metallic smell of blood, the stickiness of it as it clings to hair and skin and skull, and how Lizzie constantly feels the need to touch its wetness or kiss the cold skin of her dead father, right "where he is cut". Description of Lizzie's tongue and how she runs it over her teeth or uses it to taste certain things, as if trying to get a fuller picture, is particularly disturbing and makes for very uncomfortable reading. Not since my first reading of Perfume by Patrick Suskind have I felt this way about a book.

Schmidt's debut is dazzling and it very much gripped me in its claws from its very first pages. Employing a unique ability to unnerve, it enthralled me in its story of a dysfunctional family and home. Despite their hateful characteristics and deceptive ways, the characters in this novel are utterly fascinating, and their unique and engaging voices make this a challenging but immensely satisfying read. I love what Schmidt has done here: this story is haunting and so very unsettling, but truly, truly wonderful. One of my favourite reads this year so far.

On an emotional level, this book is remarkable, igniting all senses. I could feel the closeness of that awful house, the closed-in smell of people and food and sickness; taste the pears and feel the stickiness on my fingers; hear Andrew and Abby slurp their soup. And the hate and fear are palpable. These are all dangerously broken people and their interactions are ominous. Showing the story from multiple points of view allows the characters to show their warped personalities and gives Schmidt a vehicle to suggest theories, to offer alternatives, to build tension and doubt. This is a mesmerizing piece of writing.

Logically it is somewhat less successful. Why did they keep eating the same pot of mutton stew? Is it what made them sick? Didn't they at least suspect it? Why was it forever on the stove? And what's up with Benjamin? He was a mixed success as a plot device. Yes, he added another option and he explained the murder weapon, but his presence felt artificial, which was especially troubling in such a vivid novel.

All in all, this is a wow.

Cracking stuff! Really well written, well researched and great imagery givi the reader a eal sense of unease - was gripped from the start. Will post proper review when I've had time to think it through better.

Remember Lizzie Borden, accused then acquitted of murdering her father and step-mother with an axe in 1892? This is a retelling of the story and it is intensely and wonderfully insane.

The writing is superb; the historical details are fascinating. Told as a multiple first person narrative, Sarah Schmidt puts us variously in the minds of Lizzie Borden, her sister, their maid and a hired thug.

The sections which are told from Lizzie's warped perspective had me blinking and refocusing on the world around me just to try to retain my own sanity.

I felt most sorry for the maid, who seemed the sanest of the lot, but trapped by her precarious position in society. It becomes clear, though, that all women in the story are captives to their gender in some way.

At first the sister is set up as the sane one against Lizzie's eccentricities, but every now and then she says something that has you frowning and wondering about her own sanity.

One of my favourite characters in the book was the house, which I know sounds daft, but Schmidt writes it in such a way that you really do feel like the house is part of the whole scene of horror. The Borden house doesn't simply creak. It pops, it has unexplained smells coming in through the roof and it locks people in with its airless heat that magnifies the stench of blood throughout the house.

I was a little unsure of the narrative in the final quarter or so. It seems to take a few strange - and possibly unnecessary - turns which feel a little disjointed in time and place.

Overall, though, this was a gripping, beautifully written story of two murders which many contemporaries believed couldn't have been committed by Lizzie Borden - simply because she was a female.

Didn't care for this. The style of writing was choppy and clunky sentences. The storyline was back and forth but not in a way that was fluid. The storyline was incomplete and left you with still too many questions. All in all I could have skipped this one.