3.5 Stars
I discovered that I’d missed this novel by Lynn Coady when it was released in 2019 so decided I’d catch up.
In her mid-forties, Karen Petrie returns to Nova Scotia after her mother’s death. Aside from dealing with grief and guilt at virtually abandoning her mother for years, Karen also becomes the caregiver for her older sister Kelli who has a developmental disability. Trevor, a home care worker, arrives to take Kelli for walks but quickly begins to insert himself into their lives. Though uneasy with his overbearing personality, Karen gives in to Trevor’s eagerness to help and allows him to go “above and beyond his designated role” as she struggles with achieving balance in her life so care for Kelli doesn’t take over her life as she feels it did her mother’s.
The increasingly dangerous situation with Trevor frames the narrative, but it is also very much a story about Karen’s relationship with her mother and her sister. Karen comes to realize how selfish and self-centred she was in her younger years and comes to understand her mother and her motivations. I enjoyed seeing her personal growth in this regard; however, her unwillingness or inability to see the danger Trevor poses is unbelievable.
From the beginning, Trevor’s behaviour is creepy. He goes from being manipulative to vaguely threatening. Karen’s mother had apparently given him a key and he uses it to make unexpected visits to the house. He becomes upset when Karen makes unilateral decisions and steers her away from what seem like sensible decisions about Kelli’s care.
Other people like a neighbour, another care worker, and Karen’s friend Jessica see Trevor’s problem with boundaries. Even Karen makes observations like “he sometimes took things weirdly personally and had kind of bullied my sister and me into accepting various acts of kindness on his part” and he was “a little pushy. He could be bossy, and moody when he didn’t get his way. But most of all, he was presumptuous.” Nonetheless, she ignores warnings and makes excuses for his behaviour. Karen is middle-aged and well-educated, “holder of two advanced degrees” – a lawyer working as a legal consultant – yet she doesn’t recognize obvious warning signs? She’s basically a doormat, allowing herself to be bullied and emotionally manipulated. She is dealing with a lot of heavy emotions but surely that doesn’t mean all critical thinking skills are turned off.
Karen is the narrator and she speaks in a conversational tone. It’s obvious that she is telling a story because she makes comments like “What was wrong with you, friends always ask when I get to this part of the story” and “What was I planning on doing, exactly? People always stop me, when I get to this part of the story, to ask that question, because I can never quite articulate what it is I had in mind” and “To this day I shake my head at those instincts. I shake it right along with all the people I tell this story to.” Besides emphasizing Karen’s poor judgment, these comments weaken suspense because it’s obvious that in the end all will work out. This is a problem for a book described as a suspense novel.
This is not a bad novel, but it didn’t grab and hold my attention as I expected.
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