This book feels like it could have been written in that last year or so. There’s nothing particularly newish about it, and certainly nothing that particularly ages it either. But what I mean is that it feels like someone more or less cashing in on #metoo in some ways, but because it’s not and because it’s not vulgar in its representation, it actually shows a kind of prescience about toxic masculinity and sexual violence. I guess people should have been listening.
This is also an intricate thriller that creates realistic and convincing characters and more than that does a very good job hiding what the actual “suspense” of the novel actually is until very late. Ismay and Heather are sisters in their mid to late 20s (which coincidentally puts them exactly my age now) who have a mother with schizophrenia, an aunt who functions as a live-in help, and each of them are seeing a man they hope to marry. They share a secret, maybe. It’s possible, but not known that Heather drowned their stepfather 13 years prior when she caught him kissing and fondling Ismay in the hallway. If she did this, it was to protect to her sister. Regardless, the death exacerbated and sped up their mother’s affliction, and now we find ourselves in the present. Ismay has also hidden her suspicion that Heather killed their stepfather and the narrative doesn’t tell us what Heather does (or doesn’t know).
And so now when Ismay’s boyfriend leaves her for another woman, Ismay is concerned that Heather’s protective streak, if it exists, will come back in force.
Like I said, there’s a lot of different and various examples of how low-level and explicit forms of violence men in relationship with women can and do perpetrate. It’s a relatively richly formed novel. It’s also my first Ruth Rendell, and I found it immediately better than a lot of new star writers like Ruth Ware and Paula Hawkins, who seem to be dipping right into this well.
(photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water%27s_Lovely)