Krishna
I don’t know what to make of this one.. The story starts out oh so boring. Why? Read the details below. Then you get a sudden shock and the story is elevated to another level – or so you think. But it is an evanescent spark that quickly gets extinguished and the tale falls back into the gutter where it stays until the very end.
This story is about three people: Damien, his wife Lucia and Lucia’s long lost sister Mara.
Damien goes to school to pick up his daughter April, who is not there. His son Dylan studies in the same school. His wife Lucia calls and says that ‘Mara was found by the police’.
He tells her that he is sorry but she says, ‘You don’t understand. They found her alive. She is not dead’.
Back story? A hint comes in the prolog where a girl has been abducted and put in the basement by a man and she realizes that it is a secluded spot and that she is trapped. She is a very young girl.
As they go to positively ID (or not) Mara, Damien remembers that he met and wooed Lucia right after Mara’s disappearance. Creepy, at least, to me. It gets worse. He is upset when she is not morose about losing her sister over a period of time; upset when she makes new friends and finds happiness; upset that she finds new interests. (All in the past).
In the present, he still upsets Mara when he meets her at the station. She also says weird things like Lucia did not wait for her but moved on – marrying Damien, having children…
Mara is slowly recovering in a care facility and Damien goes there to help Lucia.
In the past, he has drifted off from her but all comes flooding back when she comes back to town. He discovers that he still is deeply in love with her.
The two factor storytelling (past and present) is done here too, but you don’t see the point. You already know that they have nothing to do with each other and so wonder why the author chose this technique to move the story along.
He keeps whining about why his wife should stay by her long lost sister who needs her badly when ‘he and the kids miss her terribly’. He seems completely oblivious to the situation even, and you begin to wonder if this is just his callous attitude or whether there is something more.
He stupidly gives an interview to a reporter (under a false name) and even more stupidly gives her his real phone number.
He seems to be so whiny, self centred and annoying that you seem to want to stop reading altogether as it keeps reminding you how unreal the story is. And Damien’s point of view is not fully explained except as a whiny needy thrill seeker that you don’t buy into it at all. The writing seems to lack the depth required to understand the characters so all of them come out as emotionless, lifeless mannequins and you don’t have any empathy for any of them.
He now suspects Mara. How could she have lived for seventeen years without even having a chance to escape? How did she finally manage? What is she not telling? Perhaps it is OK in a story but if you think about the trauma she suffered and the aftereffects – sudden anger, attacking fits, confusion – you really despise Damien for his insensitivity. Was that what the author intended? It does not seem like it when you read the book.
Mara does behave oddly, throwing a glass jar of water and pretending that Damian threw it and frightened her. She seems to have an evil streak in her but no one sees it but Damian.
Anyway, not just Lucia, but even Mara agrees to give a press conference for the hungry press folks. She aces it. Since Lucia agreed to be in the press conference only if Damian agreed that Mara can come live with them, Damian reluctantly takes her home, already afraid for his children.
When he finds Mara sitting in front of his daughter’s bed staring into the bed and oblivious of everything else even when Damien tries to talk to her, it sends chills down his spine.
Later, Mara offers to cook food for them but brings a sesame seed bun which, due to his severe allergy, almost kills Dylan.
This is the problem with the story. She manages to bring bread and until the incident happens, there is not even a clue about Dylan’s allergy. Mara seems to go from persecuted victim to diabolical woman at the drop of the hat – yes, I know that this is her character but the description is flat.
Want another example? When a reporter tries to blackmail Damian into giving her an exclusive story, we suddenly find out that he has been sleeping around and one woman has confessed to the reporter. Till then, absolutely no mention of it. Come on, what the hell? It is easy to write stories and then invent reasons as to why something should happen. Or at least that is what this whole tale feels like, Add to it the one dimensional thinking of almost everyone and the net effect is that you don’t even feel for anyone in the story or anything that happens. Looks like reading a two penny pulp fiction of the fifties.
Another example: in order to trap Mara into confessions that he can provide to the blackmailing reporter, he sets up a camera and probes (very artlessly) about her possible infatuation with her kidnapper. She finds and removes the hidden camera. All these are strung together but in a very simple sequence – the intent is expressed, I grant you, but in such superficial terms that again you get the impression of reading a book strung together like a comic book story.
He goes exploring in the place where she was kept captive and finds three clues that are valuable. You have to remember that this was the place the police had thoroughly investigated and failed to find any and our amateur sleuth Damian manages to find them : a photograph where Mara seems to be happily standing next to a guy, a private notebook (on loose sheets) that was ‘put in a crevice in a wall with a loose stone to close it’ (No wonder the police missed it! They are only professionals.) and a birthday card for each of her birthday in captivity except the last one, even though she escaped only two weeks after that birthday. Nothing sexual in the cards.
The story takes a sudden turn when Mara’s version is revealed. Briefly, it is totally at odds with Damian’s. He did come into her room and creeped her out. He did hit her and not just threaten to hit her. What’s going on?
You begin to think that this book could get interesting. Two versions of the same story? In fact, since each one is thinking about what happened, is each one remembering the same event differently? You begin to think you maybe misjudged the story.
But no, it drops right back into the caricature gutter it briefly rose from. By the way, the author does not even bother to explain this dichotomy even at the end of the book, so go figure.
It gets worse when Damian takes her in his car, bound and gagged and throws her in the same place where she was imprisoned. (Of course, nobody, not even one curious visitor, is there conveniently. )
And what is worse, he locks her in and then comes back with the reporter Tanya. He takes her in a bad imitation (curly hair wig etc) of James Finch.
Then he behaves like a raving, violent, lunatic but both women whimper and more importantly, Mara completely gives up and confesses to her killing James. It turns out that she killed him out of compassion, on his request, as a kind of euthanasia after he got incurable disease (cancer?).
Damien’s clumsy plan is to flood the house with gas and kill them both, and cause an explosion. Police would think that James Finch took them there and murdered them both (as they don’t know that James Finch is dead, buried right outside the window as per Mara’s confession, under a vegetable patch). Yes, right. And they will think that Tanya was lured by James for the sake of a story.
You groan. But of course it goes wrong. Mara manages to hit him senseless and Tanya and Mara escape. The house duly blows up but there are cheap twists a la a B Grade horror movie.
All in all, not really a great read. There is some kind of story even if characters behave totally out of character and the narration is kind of made up as you go.
3/10
= = Krishna