Title: The Devil and Mrs Davenport
Author: Paulette Kennedy
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Pages: 347
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Loretta Davenport, mother of
ten-year-old Lucas and five-year-old Charlotte, and wife of Peter, a Bible
History professor at Bethel College, falls ill with fever and begins to hear
the voices of the dead for the first time.
In an attempt to understand
her new psychic abilities, Loretta meets Dr Curtis Hansen who encourages her to
hone her abilities. Loretta wants to use her abilities to bless others, but
Peter, who isn’t the paragon of virtue he pretends to be, says they are from
the Devil. He suspects that Loretta is having an affair with Dr Hansen. Worse,
he fears losing control over her.
As Loretta, influenced and
inspired by Dr Hansen, slowly discovers her desire for independence, Peter is
driven by the need to curtail and control her.
Will Loretta ever be free of
his influence? Or will she pay for ‘playing’ with the devil?
The story is set in
September 1955. The story is written in the 3rd person past tense limited PoV
of Loretta. But the flashbacks are in the present tense. The book begins with a
content warning for references to physical, emotional, sexual and religious abuse;
fatphobia; murder; self-harm; alcohol addiction; pregnancy and abortion.
Loretta’s critical self-talk
tells us what a prig Peter is. How he won’t let her be herself, how he
discourages her at every step, makes her feel guilty of being neglectful of the
family even when she is sick. And all along, there is the threat of violence,
overt and covert.
She has to buy his love with
an “artfully concocted meal or with her body.”
The more we read about
Peter, the less we like him. He isn’t an outright villain, but he is the kind
of man who would not permit a woman to have her own interests. She must renew
herself in the image he chooses for her, lest he do it for her.
Alcoholism is not Peter’s
only addiction. Religion is too. There is a steady escalation in his bad
behaviour over the course of the book.
The period setting is
beautifully brought out. The author has used vocabulary from the era to create
the world. Words like coffret and cabochon root us in the setting. The names of
the characters were perfectly selected. Loretta, Ida, Barbara, Nancy, Curtis,
Gregory, they fit right into the era.
Other details help us to
understand the period. Rock and roll was forbidden in conservative circles, and
Elvis was an emerging voice. The technology available then, while in its
nascent stages, wasn’t freely available to everyone. Entire families shared a
single phone line.
Additionally, as per the
beliefs of the time, women were the property of their husbands. They could not
work or open a bank account without the permission of their husbands or that of
a male family member.
Some quotes from the book:
Sometimes solitude was grief’s best friend.
Things only seem normal because you’re used to them and don’t know any different.
Sometimes a mind needs to wander . . . It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I could relate to Loretta.
Our hearts go out to her for the abuse she suffers and to the women of the time
for the control wielded by men and by the system over women.
I wasn’t satisfied with how
the book ended. It would have been better if it had ended in the present. The
Epilogue 18 years later served no purpose other than to bring in another gay
relationship, a running thread in the author’s writing that I saw in her
previous book, Parting the Veil. The only problem is that, compared to the
relationship of Vera and Barbara, this other relationship seemed rather
tokenish.
The devil of the title
assails Loretta in many forms. It is the devil of alcoholism, infidelity,
physical and mental abuse, the lack of women’s rights and freedoms, and even
institutional religion. Since this book is set in the 1950s in the Deep South,
the author also reminds us of the devil of slavery and segregation which
oppressed the black community.
In the shape of Loretta’s
neighbour Phyllis Colton, we come to know of the bigoted views that the people
of the time held.
There were some errors,
which will no doubt be corrected, since this was an ARC.
Scroll down
for Spoilers:
What was the point of Darcy
taking over Loretta’s body just to shout Riverside? Loretta could have shouted
the word too. She distinctly heard Darcy telling her that she could make the
men stop. Why didn’t Darcy do anything?
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