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THE WIDOW
by Fiona Barton
NAL, February 2016
336 pages
$26.00
ISBN: 1101990260


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

As the book opens, Jean Taylor, recently widowed when her husband went under a bus in front of a local supermarket, is being besieged by aggressive doorstepping journalists trying to convince her to grant an exclusive interview. One, Kate Waters, does get inside, thus becoming one of the four characters to which various chapters are devoted. The first, and most important, is Jean herself and the third, police detective Bob Sparkes. Waters and Sparkes both want the same thing from Jean - the truth - but that might be something she is either unwilling or unable to provide. There is a fourth and less prominent character, Dawn Elliott, who also wants the truth for reasons far more pressing and personal than either reporter or cop.

The truth they are after concerns Jean's deceased husband. Glen had been suspected of abducting and perhaps killing a two-year-old girl named Bella, Dawn's child. He had been charged with the murder, but the proceedings had collapsed for want of secure evidence. In the intervening two years, he and Jean had been living as quietly as possible. But now he is dead and everyone wants to know if he was guilty and if Jean had in any way helped him or indeed, if she had been fully involved in the crime.

The story unfolds in non-consecutive time blocks. Those involving Bob Sparkes detail the police investigation - reasonably solid, not particularly imaginative, and lifted by Sparkes himself, who is genuinely moved by the missing baby and who comes in time to care about Jean. For a fictional policeman he is something of an oddity - no storming about, no depression, no fits of drunken despair. He's simply steady, stolid, yet decent and sympathetic. And he remains with the case until it is finally resolved.

The other investigator is Kate Waters, and the burden of her narrative sheds more light on the interplay between journalist and subject than it does on the crime itself. Fiona Barton formerly was chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where she won Reporter of the Year at the National Press Awards. More recently she has been working with and training exiled and threatened journalists around the world. If any of these need some instruction in how to get a reluctant witness to tell all, the chapters in which Kate appears in this book will serve as a first-class instruction manual. Yet, though Kate certainly belongs in the class of naggingly persistent journalistic pests, she could be much worse. She is an effective manipulator, but not a cynical one. She is certainly more tactful and respectful than the lot from another paper that are running Dawn, though the bereaved mother learns quickly enough to use them to her advantage.

But it is Jean who is of the greatest interest and the chapters dealing with her at various points in the investigation detail the stages of her own developing comprehension of what her husband did and how far she can accuse herself of complicity in his deeds.

Like far too recent many books, some good, some dreadful, that feature a female protagonist, THE WIDOW is accompanied by publicity that lumps it in with the bestsellers THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and GONE GIRL. I have lost count of the number of "Girl" titles that have come my way in the past year. It is as though the battle to insist that adult female humans were properly called women had never happened. It's a wonder that this one wasn't called THE GIRLWIDOW. It is an identification that does the book no favours. If indeed you are a fan of THE GIRL books, you are likely to be disappointed with this. No unreliable narrator, no dynamite revelations, no sleight of hand. Instead we have a sensitive dissection of the complications of a marriage out of which a wife emerges only gradually from unreflective submission. A bonus is the author's professional examination of the nuances of the effects of publicity on those who, however briefly, are in the spotlight.

In short, no tricks here, but a very satisfying, even provocative, read.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, February 2016

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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