Library Limelights 207

Christian White. The Nowhere Child. USA: Minotaur Books, 2018.

Identity is our deepest personal possession ‒ knowing who we are, where we belong, literally where we come from. What happens if that was all a lie? In Australia, Kim Leamy's life goes upside down when an American from Kentucky insists she is his sister Sammy, missing since she was two years old. A DNA test confirms that he is her brother Stuart Went; her stepfather Dean admits he knew his wife Carol was not her biological mother. Kim and her younger sister Amy are at first distraught, wondering if all their relationships will change. Kim, angry that her deceased mother and Dean hid the secret from her, flies to Kentucky without informing her family. She and Stuart (nine years old at the abduction time) are determined to uncover how such a kidnapping could occur, and what kind of Went family dynamics may have played into it.

How did a small child get to Australia? Is she Kim Leamy or Sammy Went? Her struggle to reconcile them continues while meeting her sister Emma, two grandmothers, and Molly and Jack ‒ her now-divorced biological parents – some of whom are adherents of the fundamentalist Church of the Light Within—therein introducing snake handlers and unsavoury practices. Finding her "real" mother is merely the tip of the iceberg; the background of this "new" family shows how everyone changed after they lost Sammy, all the suspicions and surprises, with violence not far off. The novel is very satisfying in its "Then" and "Now" construction, each segment ending with the perfect amount of tension. Here's an author to watch after this compelling debut.

One-liners:

▪ It wasn't that I was a bad liar; Amy was just an exceptional lie detector. (31)

▪ If Ava Eckles was good at one thing, it was getting her drunk on. (100)

▪ Was Molly remembering around the bad parts, Emma wondered, or blocking them out completely? (220)

▪ An inconvenient truth was dawning on me: I didn't much like this woman. (246)

▪ "I lost the light a long time ago, but found it again in you, and in that little girl." (340)

Multi-liners:

▪ Now the world had turned grey. Perhaps Shelley's mushrooms would bring back some of that colour. (41)

▪ "Aren't you tired of hiding, Jack? Aren't you tired of fighting it? Don't you just wanna start living sometimes?" (165)

▪ "You changed when she was born. You went into labour as one person and came home from the hospital as someone else." (226)

▪ Stuart looked curiously at us both. It seemed as though every Went had a secret. (278)

Jack at trigger point:

The rage had taken hold now. He might have to explain what he was doing here later, when he stumbled home broken-nosed and bloody, but that was a distant concern. Now he wanted a fight. Fight away the pain and the panic, the fear and the hatred. Fight away the church and Molly and his mother and Buddy and Travis and Sammy. (128)

Truth concealed:

"What did she say when you confronted her?"

"I didn't. I couldn't, I mean. She died four years ago."

Emma frowned. "Well ain't that a bitch."

The truth was I wasn't even sure I'd have confronted her if she were alive. Dean's collusion was enough to break my heart, but at least he had an excuse to lie, weak though it may have been. He was simply protecting his wife, and keeping a promise. But Carol Leamy knowingly took me away from another family. It would have taken nearly everything I had to ask her the question, and more than I'd have left to cope with the answer. If she'd been alive when Stuart approached me, I might never have called him back. (164)

Truth revealed:

On the way back to the car Molly gnawed her fingernails. Emma had never seen her do that. They slid into the Taurus but Molly didn't start the engine. "Just tell me why, Emma?"

"...What?"

"Tell me why, then we never have to discuss it again."

"Mom, I don't—"

"You think I don't know my own daughter's handwriting?"

Emma suddenly felt very cold. "It was supposed to be a joke."

"Please don't lie to me, Emma. Not about this. Lie to me about anything else but not about this."

"I was high," she said. "Shelley and I cut class the day Sammy went missing and ate magic mushrooms in the woods." (225)

Nicholas Searle. The Good Liar. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2015.

Another debut novel, another tale revolving around identity. Roy Courtnay, as we first meet him, is a sleazeball kitted up as a pretentious retired gentleman of means. His favourite current activity is finding old women his own age through online dating sites. Although he's on the make for someone of wealth, mostly he meets women ineligible for his con; he regularly excoriates the hapless souls for lying about their personal attributes in online ads. But then ... he meets Betty, the perfect candidate, so he charms her successfully. Betty has a deeply caring grandson, Stephen, who is suspicious of Roy but accepts it when he eventually moves in with her. Stephen is working on an academic project with his supervisor Gerald but keeps a close eye on Betty. Roy tells her little about his past, but we benefit from his reflections.

But Roy has quite a history; at times he temporarily adopted a new ID to avoid trouble. Back we go to 1998, when he was the leader of a small team of experienced crooks; their con games gave him the financial boost he needed for his genteel appearances. He is ever so slowly working on Betty's financial trust. In a reversal of conventional backstory, the author takes us back further again and again to episodes in Roy's life — 1973, 1963, 1957, 1946, and finally 1938 (yes, he's an old man now). The death of his wartime translator, Hans, was a critical moment in his growing misogyny. One man's spite led to horrific results. Betty is ready to comply with a joint bank account despite Stephen's distrust; will Roy really fleece her? Occasionally some complicated money transactions here in an extremely well put-together thriller.

Word: nugatory ‒ insignificant

One-liners:

▪ Bob's body toppled down the bank, rolled, and with a plop fell into the water. (121)

▪ Sylvia looked across the table at him with what she judged to be suitably disguised desire. (151)

▪ "She looks after you, and surely that's what you need now, not more money?" (210)

▪ She had brought filth and disgrace on herself, and somehow it would be infectious if she told others. (261)

▪ She had never looked for that dreadful American thing, closure—being perfectly content for it all to be there, packed in the recesses, never to be aired again―and certainly not for revenge. (288)

Multi-liners:

▪ These were not organized criminals but a bunch of second-rate chancers with hardly an idea between them and no resort to investigative or retributive resources. Their collective competence had resided in Roy alone. (53-4)

▪ With his light manner at their meetings each evening, Martin unwittingly piled more indignity onto Roy. At some stage in their joint career, Martin would pay for this. (96)

▪ She knew the world contained unpleasantness and that she was insulated from it, but that was all. She did not imagine her privileges and protections could fall away. (261)

▪ "But I'm right, aren't I? Lying is how we lead our lives." (319-20)

Stephen and Betty approach the first meet-up:

"But you'll be in there. With him. Who knows what he'll be like? What it'll be like for you?" He smiles.

"That's precisely it. It makes things easier. Truly. You don't see, do you? How could you? I'm past the age when anything really matters, least of all what I say or do. I can be as outrageous as I want with impunity. I'm a dangerous quantity. I'm beyond embarrassment. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. I'll live to fight another day." (6)

Upper class minder:

"Where exactly do you fit in in the house?" he asked. "I mean if it's not too presumptuous a question?"

"Not at all, sir," said Roy. "My role is as Lord Stanbrook's aide on business matters. A factotum, you might say."

"You run the estate for him?"

"Oh no, sir. I've very little to do with the estate itself. Beyond me, all that stuff. Lord Stanbrook has diverse business interests. I manage his portfolio inasmuch as I ensure that all necessary matters are attended to and nothing is forgotten. I accompany him on business trips."

"A fixer, you mean."

"If you care to put it that way, sir. Though doubtless Lord Stanbrook might express it slightly differently." (150)

Roy’s colleague:

"No, we're hanging on with this one. To the bitter end. Look, Vincent. This is my life. Dodging and weaving. This is me. We both know that it's you too. I know what makes you tick, Vincent. No, when it comes to it I'll die in the saddle, talking some greedy mark into doing something stupid. Maybe this one, maybe the next. Now, can we get on with it?" (211)

Postwar Nazi hunter:

He can recall vividly the moment the revolver skidded to a halt on the floor and that split second when all three men saw that they had arrived at a turning point. He can recall his heart leaping in fear-fueled exultation as he made for the weapon. He can recall the two other men doing the same, and the silence of an age before the coming together. He can remember little else. In his mind there is a blur of action, the flash of the blade, pain in his arm, and then the absence of pain, blood spattering, the crunch of bodies colliding and the report of the Webley, astonishingly loud at such close quarters. It booms now, in his head. But then what? He is not even sure who he is. (203)

John Green. Turtles All the Way Down. USA: Penguin Books, 2017.

Amazing, just amazing ... the mind of a teenage girl with clinical anxieties who strives to fit in. So fascinating that by page 2 I was captured; I couldn't not read it! Aza Holmes is on existential overdrive trying to reconcile her insistent, uncontrolled obsessions and fears. Bacteria; microbes; infection; the thoughts overwhelm her and battle with each other. As her shrink says, the wound on her finger that she repeatedly re-opens is her pain locus. Her father's old car, Harold, is a great source of comfort and her best friend Daisy helps to anchor her in reality. Daisy is a Star Wars fanatic and writes fan fic online, to the delight of scores of followers. When the two hear that there's a huge reward for information about the absconded billionaire Russell Pickett, Daisy remembers that Aza knew his son Davis at summer camps.

Davis is happy to meet Aza again, and he ends up giving the two girls the amount of the reward money from cash his father stashed around his house—for not revealing what they discovered. The plot thickens along with Aza's spiralling thoughts of self-doubt. Then, upon identifying with Daisy's fictional character Ayala ‒ a selfish narcissist Daisy deems "useless" ‒ Aza needs to deal with her anger. Davis has to cope with his brother grieving their lost father and Daisy has to handle Aza. Are all high school kids today so precocious? ... nonetheless endearing and unconsciously, gently, funny. Narrated by Aza, there's something for everyone in this exceptional novel.

One-liners:

▪ Admittedly, I have some anxiety problems, but I would argue it isn't irrational to be concerned about the fact that you are a skin-encased bacterial colony. (3)

▪ I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now. (25)

▪ I couldn't make myself happy, but I could make people around me miserable. (157)

▪ Three different medications and five years of cognitive behavioral therapy, and here we are. (213)

▪ Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. (227)

Multi-liners:

▪ Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see. (9)

▪ "Right, okay, we're doing this. You still got that canoe?" (18)

▪ "I'm such a billionaire without the billions, Holmesy. I have the soul of a private jet owner, and the life of a public transportation rider." (43)

▪ "Just be honest with Dr. Singh, okay? There's no need to suffer." Which I'd argue is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the human predicament, but okay. (70)

▪ The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they go, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company. (186)

Comfort:

"Does it hurt?" I nodded. "You know Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body ‘ain't the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.’" Mom put her hand on my wrist and fell back asleep. (224)

Daisy's POV:

"God, a lot has happened since you lost your mind. Is that rude to say?"

"Actually, the problem is that I can't lose my mind," I said. "It's inescapable."

"That is precisely how I feel about my virginity," Daisy said. "Another reason Mychal and I were doomed—he doesn't want to have sex unless he's in love, and yes, I know that virginity is a misogynistic and oppressive social construct, but I still want to lose it, and meanwhile I've got this boy hemming and hawing like we're in a Jane Austen novel. I wish boys didn't have all these feelings I have to manage like a fucking psychiatrist." (240-1)

Leading to the book's title:

"You just, like, hate yourself? You hate being yourself?"

"There's no self to hate. It's like, when I look into myself, there's no actual me—just a bunch of thoughts and behaviors and circumstances. And a lot of them don't feel like they're mine. They're not things I want to think or do or whatever. And when I look for the, like, Real Me, I never find it. It's like those nesting dolls, you know? The ones that are hollow, and then when you open them up, there's a smaller doll inside, and you keep opening hollow dolls until eventually you get to the smallest one, and it's solid all the way through. But with me, I don't think there is one that's solid. They just keep getting smaller." (244)

Car music:

Mychal was laughing as Daisy and I screamed the lyrics to each other. She sang lead, and I belted out the background voice that just repeated, "You're everything everything everything," and I felt like I was. You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you. (257)