Novels No. 65

~ TPL came through. But what kind of choices had I made?! ~ 

Paula Hawkins. The Blue Hour. Canada: Doubleday, 2024.

The late, great artist Vanessa Chapman occupies the thoughts of two devoted admirers. James Becker – who never knew her – is the Director of the Fairburn Foundation's art collection, inheritor of Vanessa's artistic output. Grace Haswell was Chapman's trusted companion and executor. Becker's boss, Sebastian Lennox, whose father Douglas created the foundation, claims Grace did not deliver all the art works that the foundation is entitled to, as per Chapman's will. Becker's in the uncomfortable position of negotiating with Grace, after Sebastian made legal threats. A human bone is detected in one of the sculptures, speeding up the story pace, one would think, but the focus is all on the past. Her personal writings reflect pieces of Vanessa's life—her former affair with then-gallery owner Douglas Lennox; her philandering husband Julian whom she can't resist, who went missing after one of their heated arguments.

Grace and Becker strike a common bond, so Grace doles out notes and diary entries to him. BUT where is this going? There is no compelling activity. Nothing happens except in the past. And most of it hinged on Vanessa's unpredictable temperament, her musings on freedom and abstract concepts while she inflicted emotional damage on those who loved her. Her creative feelings had an ebb and flow something like the tidal access to her island home. Becker has other worries too. His travels to manage this complicated business mean that his pregnant wife Helena—who had at one time agreed to marry Sebastian—is often alone at Fairburn. With Sebastian hovering. Not to mention Seb's mother, the bitter Lady Emmeline, widow of Douglas.

There are old dead bodies, and a killer to be reckoned with. Lack of tension in the present bores me—call me shallow. I had trouble relating to the central figures of Vanessa and Grace, too much self-agonizing, awkward chronology. I couldn't work up enthusiasm for an unstable artiste and the author's constant obfuscation of clues to a past crisis. On the other hand (!), art lovers may find the book fascinating.

Word: haptic(s) = relates to sense of touch; tactile; a touch or vibration often employed by technology comms

Vanessa

▪ Sometimes his cruelty takes my breath away—as though his infidelity is not enough, he helps himself to my pictures, too, and the money I have worked for. (53)

▪ I have to be single-minded, I have to put work at the heart of my life. And I have to leave because, if I don't, I think I might kill him. Or he me. (53)

▪ You know things you shouldn't, and I'm not sure how to be around you again. I hope you understand what I mean. (117)

▪ "Tell them what, Grace? That he destroyed all my work? What if something's happened to him?" (168)

▪ Grace is ever-present. She is careful, solicitous. I cannot breathe when she is in the room. Her attention is smothering, she cannot know how I suffer. (202)

Bits

▪ "You don't think the press might be interested in the fact that a human bone has been found to form part of a sculpture made by the late, great, reclusive, enigmatic Vanessa Chapman?" (14)

▪ "What's fascinating for me," he says, "is the progression of her style, the development of it, both in terms of individual pieces and her whole body of work, so I imagine that almost all of those sketches will have value, provided I can get a sense of their order." (66)

▪ Through deft application of paint and sparing use of color, treading that fine line she walked between abstraction and representation, Vanessa has articulated her terror in a painting so vivid you can almost smell the fear. (125)

▪ Now he knows this: Vanessa painted what she loved, she painted her freedom, she painted the sea. She painted what she feared. (125)

▪ "So ... what are we saying? We're suggesting she's hidden the paintings somewhere?" (128)

▪ What she and Vanessa had was not romantic, but it was not subordinate either. Just a friend, that's what people say. Oh, she's just a friend. As though a friend were something commonplace, as though a friend couldn't mean the world. (142)

▪ Grace remembers the days and weeks and months after Julian went missing, how difficult Vanessa became: irrational, secretive, strange. Silent. (225)

Catherine Steadman. Look in the Mirror. NYC: Ballantine Books, 2024.

Nina Hepworth mourns the death of her father whom she adored beyond any other relationships. At the age of thirty-four, she has inherited a comfortable nest egg, and—from the man she thought she knew inside out—the surprise of her life: a gated hillside property in the British Virgin Islands. When she goes to see it, she's speechless. Why did her father never speak of this to her? When did he ever have time to supervise the construction of this amazing, high-tech home, so unlike the dad she knew? Or the clearly exorbitant cost! Is it possible he had a whole secret life he kept from her? James Booth of a local law firm made all arrangements, paid for in advance with instructions. Since Nina and dad loved word puzzles and mental games, often testing each other, she suspects that this house is the biggest test of all, probably an elaborate game set up just for her.

Maria is a short-term, contract nanny for high-end socialites; she's saving to finish her medical studies. In an island mansion, she awaits the delayed arrival of the client and children, enjoying the plentiful amenities. She's warned she must not try to enter a locked basement room—until a power blackout forces her to call electrician Joon-Gi. At the same time, Nina discovers a locked room in her basement. Furthermore, by consulting Loman contractors who excavated a cliff for the house, Nina learns of a series of underground rooms below. The two women, separately, become terrified prisoners of auto-locking doors and an involuntary course of deadly challenges. Isolated with no communications, they are tracked everywhere by interior cameras. With no known reason or purpose behind the diabolical scheme, each woman fights back as best she can. Only Joe Loman and Joon-Gi, respectively, are attracted enough, or concerned enough, to try to contact them.

Truly scary indeed, and this barely touches on the entire plight. Some suspension of disbelief is required . . . until the author blew everything up for me, exposing the convoluted manipulation behind the enterprise. This greatly promising thriller turned into an eye-rolling trip into the light fantastic. Compelling questions that come to a reader's mind about credibility or sequence or possibility and alternate reality receive only more baffling input. I finished the book, sadly disappointed.

Nina

▪ "You're telling me this house is called Anderssen's Opening?" (40)

▪ "Ah, excellent choice," he mutters then raises his voice in a declamatory fashion to say, "Bathsheba, play 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.'" (52)

▪ "So this house, my dead father's house, has a locked room that doesn't appear on any architectural plans of the building and no one has been able to access it since his death." (62)

▪ Did my father do something to that man? Did I somehow do something without realizing? (126)

▪ She hasn't been poisoned; the water is going to kill her in a very different way. (173)

▪ After a moment of silence Bathsheba's voice fills the pitch blackness surrounding her. "Sensory deprivation initiated. Three hours and fifty-nine minutes remaining." (194)

▪ And yet, in spite of everything, she still believes those reasons will unveil themselves before too long and she will suddenly make sense of it all, either by the nature of what she finds down here or with the arrival of help. (203)

Maria

▪ The only person Maria had met was the woman with the chignon. And why wasn't she allowed to go in that room downstairs? (28)

▪ ... it's incredibly strange. For the property to go from high security to no security in just four days is notable. (118-9)

▪ He sprints to it. A power substation. A small gray bunker. This is what he suspected; this is what his mind has circled around in the dead of night these last few days. (123)

▪ She tumbles him down, under her, releasing her hold on the stick and double-fisting hunks of sand directly into the man's eyes and rubbing down hard—blinding him. (165)

▪ She wondered back there, between bouts of terror, back under the house, if it was just a kind of gladiatorial game for someone's sadistic amusement or if it had some larger significance? (183-4)

▪ A string of messages on the dead man's phone led her right back to the woman with the too-tight chignon. (187)