Review of THE OBSERVER by Marina Endicott (New Release)

 4 Stars

This novel depicts the struggles of RCMP officers and their partners in small rural communities. 

The setting is the 1990s in a fictional small town in northern Alberta.  Julia, the narrator, is a playwright and dramaturge who pauses her career to move with her partner Hardy to Medway where he has his first posting.  She takes a part-time position as editor of the local weekly newspaper, a job which helps her to learn about the community.

Life is not easy for either Hardy or Julia.  Hardy works long hours and is often exhausted physically and emotionally by what he witnesses on a regular basis:  “He was having a hard time in the mill of stress and exhaustion and heartsickness that overtakes any thoughtful person who does police work.” Unwilling and unable to talk with Julia, Hardy suffers in silence:  “talking was a double problem for Hardy:  a problem of security and of privacy, a problem both legal and spiritual.  Nothing he did at work could ever be told, for security reasons but also out of decency.”  The stress and daily exposure to “venal, pointless crime, the waste of intelligence and youth and substance,” and violence and death take a mental toll, resulting in a “weariness of mind and soul.”

Julia struggles as well.  Initially she has no job so feels adrift.  As an outsider, she has difficulty learning about the customs of a rural community:  “There were a lot of rules that I did not yet know or understand.  In the two months we’d been here, over and over I had leaped to a conclusion only to discover that I’d been wrong or misinformed, or prejudiced by my earlier urban life.”  She does meet other RCMP wives but “all the other wives seemed to accept and naturally understand the natural flow of this life that was so foreign to me.”  At RCMP social gatherings, she finds “So many people to catalogue and remember, so much hierarchy to understand.”  Though some women do step forward to help her, Julia finds that she “had to pick things up by osmosis, or by stealth.”  The newspaper job helps her to meet people and make connections within the community.

Besides feeling lonely because she is an outsider, she also feels lonely because she is virtually abandoned by Hardy who is often not home because of work.  Hardy’s silence about work when he is home only adds to Julia’s worry because her imagination goes wild as she thinks of all the terrible things that could happen to him.  Then there’s the almost constant fearful waiting for Hardy to come home unharmed.  Hardy’s description of their “’living in one long emergency’” is so apt.  And then there’s Julia’s sense of powerlessness; she sees her husband struggling with the stresses of his job, but doesn’t know what she can do to help him; she is only aware of her “inability to affect anything or be of help, no matter what got thrown.  I prayed all the time, insufficiently, for Hardy.”  She fears that, like a former officer in the town, Hardy might commit suicide. 

The novel is slow paced, but there is a lot of tension.  Readers who remember the Mayerthorpe incident will be aware of the dangers of life for people in law enforcement.  I was always wondering what was going to happen to Hardy.  Would he be harmed or killed at work?  Would he get the help he needs for his PTSD?  Would Julia and Hardy’s relationship survive?   

Though the book is generally serious, there are touches of humour.  Having grown up in a small town, I smiled at Julia’s learning that being told not to bring anything to a social gathering meant “a square might be nice.”  And I loved Jerome, an enormous bison named “’after that giraffe puppet who sticks his head into the house on TV.’” 

Julia comments, “I kept seeing things that made me revise my former opinions about police, opinions formed by my repugnance for the idea of police authority in general, and by my fear and ignorance.”  This novel, based on the experiences of the author and her RCMP husband, may revise some people’s opinions about police, especially when there are calls to defund the police.  Julia tries being a substitute teacher and concludes, “Teaching high school is the worst job in the world, and those who do it are not paid nearly enough.”  As a former high school teacher, I appreciate that sentiment, but the book shows that policing may be the worst job in the world. 

Because of its honest depiction of the realities of life for rural police and their partners, this book is a necessary read. 

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