Review of THE MYSTERY OF RIGHT AND WRONG by Wayne Johnston (New Release)

 4 Stars

I have read most of Wayne Johnston’s novels and have enjoyed them all; those I have reviewed on my blog have all been given 4-star ratings.  I was excited to receive a digital galley of The Mystery of Right and Wrong, his latest, and it does not disappoint.

Wade Jackson, a young aspiring writer from a Newfoundland outport, meets Rachel van Hout while at university in St. John’s and falls in love with her.  Little does he know how much the van Hout family will change his life.  As he gets to meet Rachel’s three sisters and their parents Hans and Myra, he comes to see how dysfunctional they are.  The daughters are all damaged souls:  Gloria is hypersexual and has had a spate of broken marriages; Gloria is addicted to drugs provided by her husband Fritz; Bethany is an anorexic who has made several suicide attempts; and Rachel is hyperlexic, obsessively reading Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis, and hypergraphic, obsessively writing a diary in a secret language.  Wade accompanies Rachel to South Africa and it’s then that more and more family secrets are revealed, most with Hans at the centre.

The point of view alternates between Wade, Rachel, Rachel’s encoded diary entitled “The Arelliad” written in both prose and poetry, and Hans’ “The Ballad of Clan Van Hout”, a poetic family history which he composes and recites to his daughters.  Reading “The Arelliad” is sometimes frustrating because much is left unexplained.  Who, for example, is “Shadow She, the also-Anne”?  The ballad is also confusing because Hans’ version of events changes and it is difficult to know what to believe.  It does, however, provide great insight into Han’s mind and personality. 

Characterization is a strong element in the novel.  All major characters emerge as distinct.  The four sisters, for instance, cannot be confused.  They often seem to behave in illogical ways, but all is eventually explained.  Rachel’s secret is the last to be uncovered, though I did guess the nature of it.  Certainly the last great revelation explains Rachel’s obsessions.  In case the reader is uncertain as to why she occasionally writes in poetic form, Johnston outlines his reasoning in the Author’s Note at the end of the book. 

Hans will remain for me one of literature’s great villains; more than once I thought of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello.  He is full of self-pity:  “I’m not the star that I should be because so many worker bees have spent their lives opposing me . . . the great held back by also-rans.”  He doesn’t love his wife, pretending to “adore the woman who so loudly snores, the aging face, the greying head I cannot bear to touch in bed.”  He wishes he “could have another wife” but “I would not sully with divorce what matters most – my name of course.”  He’s a racist who said “’that the blacks were uncivilized and impossible to educate, so they should never be allowed to vote or to mix with whites.’”  He is a master manipulator who accepts no blame for even his most despicable of behaviour.  Some of his comments in his ballad left me speechless.  Yet the reader, like Rachel, will ask, “Was it the sum of his experience that made [him] what he was, or some mechanism in his brain, some defect in his DNA?” 

As the title indicates, the book examines right and wrong.    Hans argues that right and wrong change over time, “The rules are endlessly revised.”  Decisions made by several people at different times in the novel inspire one to consider if a wrong can be a right in certain circumstances.  In order to survive, for instance, is it right to commit a wrong?  As the author admits, he doesn’t offer answers to the questions it poses, but book clubs will find much to debate. 

At over 550 pages, the book is lengthy.  At first the revelations come slowly but then I wondered what other secrets would be revealed.  I was even starting to think that the book was becoming almost unbelievable.  Then the Author’s Note clarifies that the novel is based on people and events in his life.  I was astonished by what Johnston discloses and by his bravery in doing so. 

I highly recommend this book.  Though the pace is sometimes slow and sections are confusing, all is eventually made clear.  And though it touches on many serious topics, it is, as the author states, not a totally dark book.  I’m not certain that I, like one of the book’s characters, can claim to be a “great reader” who reads with “hard-won discrimination,” but I do know this is a book that will reward a second reading:  I’m certain it will make the author’s skill even more obvious. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.