Krishna
This is David’s debut novel. A great debut, as David has the capability to tell you the story from the various people’s perspective, and simply escalate the everyday conflicts and tensions of the characters to a more and more alarming situation that gets tenser by the minute. A no nonsense narration, you will enjoy this book. .
Gwen has two children, Nate and Nora. She escorts Nora to swimming. She meets Jude, her ex lover. Talks about their child together who is growing up with Jude. Jude also appears to be supplying her with drugs and implying that he is still attracted to her.
The title should have warned me!
She “only” moderately does drugs (“unlike her friends”) and gets high “only” socially, taking care not to do it when she is pregnant or breastfeeding. What responsible behaviour, you marvel. (Yes you are right, I am being sarcastic.)
As opposed to her college days where there was indiscriminate weed smoking and indiscriminate sex. That, of course, was irresponsible. Her friend talks of weed as if it is one of the essentials of a weekend in a cottage.
She gets into an accident, phones her husband Brian in the middle of a pharmaceutical presentation from the hospital. The police behave totally differently, even though the fault of the accident was not hers, when they discover the packet of Marijuana in the car.
The other driver has died and Brian realizes that they are in deep trouble. His friend Robin who is a lawyer, agrees to represent her. She is bullied into giving up Jude as a source of her drug supply and even after complying, she is harassed.
Meanwhile Theresa, his sexy assistant, makes almost open overtures to him.
Jude’s daughter, who has a disfigured face, finds acceptance and happiness in sports, especially running. She gets a university scholarship on sports ability.
Jude leaves the daughter at the University and ties up with Da Da Sweet who is a sports star looking for illegal medication and weed. He brings a consignment from Canada by bribing a specific border guard with a smuggled in Vietnamese girl. Yes, right again. The girl is the bribe for the guard.
Gwen compounds the problem by admitting to Jude that she gave Jude’s name to the police.
He is initially angry but still proposes, causing her to be confused. She agrees to phone him back from outside the cabin and gets lost in the forest. The husband calls the police, especially the detective Keller whose children are in the same school as theirs and lets him know on the entire story and the son helpfully provides the licence plate on the van that Jude uses to smuggle drugs.
The tension escalates and reaches fever pitch. For instance, Kelly finds the cabin and finds a murdered body in the porch and finds the weed plantation inside. Dana meets Jude’s assistant who tries to date rape her, but she barely manages to escape.
All of it is told from everyone’s point of view. You even understand Jude’s outlook in doing all he does and yet be a doting father to Dana. You understand the boyfriend’s thought process – not to condone but you get into the minds of the people. In some ways it is like reading Gone Girl where you understand the perspective of both the husband and the wife.
Towards the end, when life is back on track, Gwen goes to a pumpkin festival and finds that temptation again stares her in the face and yields to it again. Crazy viewpoints but good narration.
6/10
- – Krishna (Feb 2018)