Author: Fiona Barton
Publisher: NAL
Pages: 336
The publishers have likened this novel to The Girl on the
Train. I have not read The Girl on the Train, but The Widow wasn’t quite as thrilling
as I expected.
At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Jean Taylor’s
husband, Glen, has been dead for a week and she’s greatly relieved. It is our
cue that all was not well with this marriage or with the man.
Jean thinks that it is now time to put away the strain and
live her life outside the shadow of his silences and his disapproval and disdain
of her imperfections. Married at 19, the older and sophisticated Glen has
always patronized her, remade her to be what he wants her to be. She is invisible,
important only in relation to Glen.
Secrets were dangerous things, the author tells us. The discovery
of a book with pictures of little children tells Glen that his wife too has her
secrets. Even as Jean obsesses over babies, she writes anonymously to Dawn,
telling her that she is to blame for losing her child.
Her inability to have children causes Jean to become
obsessed with children, while Glen retreats into his own private space,
spending long periods of time looking at porn on his computer. There comes a
point when merely looking at porn is not enough, and Glen becomes an active
participant in cyber sex. His perverseness increases.
When a two-year-old girl, Bella Elliott, is kidnapped,
detective Bob Sparkes is assigned the case. When investigations lead the police
to Glen, he denies the allegation. The police lure Glen with a false id in one
of the chatrooms that he frequents and he falls for it. But the findings are
not accepted as evidence by the court and Glen is acquitted for lack of
evidence. He then sues the police for a quarter of a million pounds, on grounds
of defamation, and wins. Try as they might, the police are unable to get
concrete evidence against Glen. With each failure, Sparkes becomes increasingly
more tormented and determined to find Bella. We keenly feel his frustration as
Bella remains unfound years later.
The book is written from four points of view: the widow’s
first person present tense account, and the third-person past tense accounts of
Detective Bob Sparkes, reporter Kate Waters and Dawn Elliott, mother of Bella. The
case is taken forward through the viewpoints of Sparkes and Kate. Certain days
are presented to us from multiple points of view.
The widow’s account begins on June 9, 2010, a week after the
death of Glen. It is the day on which reporter Kate Waters enters her home,
intent on piecing together information about Glen. While he was alive, Glen
refused to speak to the press. Kate hopes that his death will move the widow to
speak.
Detective Bob Sparkes’ account begins earlier, from October
2, 2006.
The story goes back and forth in time, and you are left
piecing the puzzle together in the strangest way possible.
Jean’s account takes us through her memories of life with
Glen, and of her own staunch support of her husband. It consists very often of
jerky sentences, often missing the pronoun, I, at the beginning. The style
seems deceptively simple, until a word or a phrase sneaks up on you and you
begin to pay attention. Towards the end, the tenor of her account changes so
stealthily that we almost miss it.
The style of each account was different, and I quickly found
myself warming to the detective’s PoV. I found the writing to be the strongest
here perhaps because the crux of the story comes alive here. He is the only one
who seems to be truly concerned about the child. Kate, although a mom of two,
just wants her story.
Through the various accounts, we come away with a sense of
the mother’s anguish, the media frenzy and the detective’s desperation. We also
understand how people’s tragic stories become fodder for the press and the
media. The book also cautions us about the murky world of online chatting and
how one must be careful and fight against the tendency to give away too much
information online. Like the people on buses who talk on their mobile phones
about the breakup of their marriage or genital warts.
Fiona also brings out the pain of a childless woman, how she
is willing to put up with the speculation, the examinations, the ultrasounds,
the endless prodding. Also, the waking up still feeling the weight of a baby
in my arms.
I also felt for Sparkes’ wife, Eileen. Even though she is
only a minor character in the book, she makes her presence felt. Her husband’s
busyness and seeming obsession with Bella’s case leave her with nothing to hold
on to.
As the story went on, I felt a keen sense of fatigue, and sympathized
with Sparkes’ inability to nail Glen. The conclusion, even though it wasn’t a
twist by any means, felt welcome and offered a sense of closure.
Overall, I think the book would have been stronger if the
author had chosen to give us the story in a chronological sequence. The
frequent travelling back-and-forth in time began to get wearisome after a
while and left me with a rather fractured view of the whole thing.
Still, a good book.
(I received a free digital copy of this book from First To Read.)
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