Novels No. 10 (LL328)

 

Catherine McKenzie. The Good Liar. Ebook download from TPL. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Cecily Grayson's husband Tom was one of more than five hundred people who died in a monstrous fire that engulfed a Chicago high-rise a year ago (the parallel to 9/11 destruction is obvious, but not the motivation). "Triple Ten" they begin calling it. Cecily was supposed to meet Tom in his office that day, but she was running late as was her habit. Filmmaker Teo Jackson pulled her to safety from the burning surroundings. Inadvertently she became the recognizable poster girl for the disaster, thanks to his published photograph. Later she agreed to co-chair a committee for the Compensation Initiative that awards funds to surviving families. The fire also took Cecily's best friend Kaitlyn who worked in Tom's office.

Kate Lynch walked away from her Chicago life during the fire; as the one-year anniversary memorial takes place, she's wrenched with guilt and shock at her own audacious move. Self-awareness is not her strong suit. Now employed as a nanny in Montreal, she goes through the daily motions, fearful that someone might identify her. Meanwhile, Teo is making a documentary about three affected families, including Cecily's and the story of Franny Maycombe. Franny had just met her biological mother for the first time, before the fire claimed her along with answers to Franny's urgent questions. Cecily is struggling with her fury on learning ‒ not long before the fire ‒ that Tom had been having an affair with another woman. She must suppress that anger for her grieving children, along with the longer-term decay of her marriage and a thirst for the woman's identity. Franny is oddly hostile in interviews with Teo, while Cecily is increasingly attracted to him. Each woman is about to erupt. Even before Kate does return to Chicago all hell is breaking loose.

Last year I enjoyed McKenzie's Please Join Us (LL292) enough to search for more of her books. This one has the expected excellent twists, although the switching of time periods can become confusing. It could be called Who Is the Best Liar? A decent page-turner until ... until the end. Suddenly, no, no, no: author unpacks revelations that hoist my disbelief through the roof. Disappointing.

Bits

▪ "I like to think of it as my love letter to Chicago and everything we went through that day." (50, Teo)

▪ "But there's been some controversy, hasn't there? About who is allowed to receive compensation?" (59, Teo)

Cecily

▪ I don't feel anything as I watch him write down my lies. ... After a year of telling them, it's become second nature. (38)

▪ I felt as if the woman I used to be was stolen from me, taken by his camera, and I could never get her back. (101)

▪ Is he in the house? Does he have a weapon? What, what, what does he want? (153)

▪ Is this what Franny wants me to see? That she's stepped into her mother's shoes? (224)

▪ "You have to finish what you came here to do. And I'm going to help you." (283)

Kate

▪ Back in Chicago, being a mother had been part of Kate's identity. (53)

▪ Kate was fantasizing about leaving off and on throughout her life. Where she'd go. What she'd call herself. (128)

▪ But why was she even thinking about going back? That had everything to do with Franny Maycombe. (222)

▪ "I swear to God. I've never seen that woman in my life." (239)

Franny

▪ "Your whole life is about other people's stories." (97)

▪ "You said it was about three families and how the compensation process affected them. Three families a year after October tenth." (212)

▪ "Like no one was going to accept me for who I was if I didn't have some extra tricks up my sleeve." (284)

Balli Kaur Jaswal. Now You See Us. Ebook download from TPL. USA: William Morrow, 2023.

Abusive treatment of third-world service workers is no secret. In wealthy Middle East and Asian populations, the poverty-stricken are in demand to perform household duties and child care. Probably also in Europe and North America, for all I know. Thousands of native Filipinas take advantage of the demand though it means moving far from home. Much of their frequently pitiful wages is sent home to help improve family life there.

Cora is one of them, an experienced migrant worker; she has taken a number of jobs through the Merry Maids Agency in Singapore. Her current employer Ma'am Elizabeth Lee puzzles her because she is so undemanding compared to most. Donita is brand new in Singapore and finds her Ma'am is the worst kind; Mrs Fann sees fault in everything she does. Angel, employed to care for an incapacitated widower, renews her acquaintance with Cora. Together they give impulsive Donita tips on acceptable behaviour for a housemaid, on their few days off. This being the twenty-first century, they have cell phones for mutual contact and Facebook for gossip about ma'ams and maids. Cora plainly fears the police, due to some mystery around the death of her beloved nephew Raymond. Flordeliza, friend of Donita, is arrested for allegedly murdering her Ma'am; Donita knows Flor was elsewhere at the time, but trying to help just causes more trouble.

All the fears and aspirations of such dependent women are catalogued. More of a mission to expose abusive behaviour than deliver a mild mystery, the book's lives needed telling. Parts can be heartbreaking, but they do find joy in familiar things that mean home to them. Now You See Us happens to be quite informative about the Philippines—their culture in general but specifically their food and language, often inserted to pause (disturb?) the narrative flow. It's almost like a guide, as well, to exotic Singapore.

Bits

▪ "I want a refund," Mrs Fann says. "I want to return my maid." (12)

▪ What about the woman who endured third degree burns from having a kettle of boiling water thrown at her? ... What about the woman whose Sir made her take off her nightgown, mop the floor with it, and then wear the filthy, sopping clothes to bed? (122)

▪ Filipinos can't be trusted. Thieves and liars, now murderers, said one commenter. (129)

Cora

▪ If the agency employed her, she wouldn't see her salary for months, not until she paid off her placement debts. (14)

▪ Please don't let her ask about what happened in Manila, Cora pleads to a God who stopped listening to her the day Raymond died. (20)

▪ Jacqueline reaches into her purse and Cora's stomach flips. She produces a hundred-dollar bill so fresh it crackles. (194)

Angel

▪ Her first days in the Vijay house coincided with falling madly in love with Suzan. (60)

▪ She looked through Angel's poems and found that they were all about her breakup. One was titled "Suzan You Are a Fucker I Wish You Get a Disease." (220)

▪ A sense of disquiet is brewing within Angel. She could resign and find a new job, but that's not all she wants. (241)

Donita

▪ "Yeah, of course I want to have respect first. But now I want to have sex." (99)

▪ The menacing tone in his voice, the way his daughter abruptly stops whining, frightens Donita. (172)

▪ Surrounded by darkness, she feels her courage building. "Flordeliza told me everything." (283)

▪ "I knew you were running around at night! You cannot be trusted." (287)