“How many seven-year-olds do you know who are friends with eighty-one-year-olds?” “It’s not ideal,” she agrees, after a moment’s consideration. “But beggars can’t be choosers.” I feel a rare moment of pity for the child. “You’re not a beggar, child.” She laughs. “I know that. You’re the beggar. I’m the chooser. Because I choose you!”
“What do you think happened to Ishaan, Ms. Fitzpatrick?” Baldy says, adopting a patronizing, kindly voice. It feels like a remarkably ridiculous question. “I think he got dicked by the dangling dong of destiny, that’s what I think.’
I guess I’m kind of a cheap date as far as books are concerned. If a book can make me laugh I’m in the author’s pocket. If a character can make me laugh, it’s hard for me not to like and care about what happens to them. If a book can both make me laugh, cry, and keep me on the edge of my seat…well. Elsie “Mad Mabel” Fitzpatrick’s acerbic wit kept me buoyed throughout. All of Sally Hepworth’s books that I have read, so far, are dual timeline. All of them have hooked me with the children in peril trope in “the past” of the story, and kept me hooked when that same child (or children) experience the fall out as adults. Mad Mabel is no different in that way from the three others by her I have read. I gave the previous book I read by this author, The Mother-in-Law5 stars, but I loved this one in a different way. I admired the character development in the former more than I liked the characters. Unlike that one, all of the protagonists in this were extremely likable and admirable, and there were many of them. I was cheering for them all the way, and their outcomes, with one exception, were very satisfactory. Well, two exceptions. One worthy character’s fate was a little over the top fortunate, but I generally don’t mind that at all. Usually, the happier the better for characters that deserve it.
81-year-old Elsie has lived on Kenny Lane in Melbourne for 60 years. Only she and her friend Daphne know her true identity: Mad Mabel, the youngest person ever to be convicted of murder in Australia. Soon though, her neighborhood, Melbourne, and the whole country (if not the world), will know her true identity. One of her neighbors whom she didn’t make any secret of being at odds with drops dead, and Elsie discovers the body. This sparks a chain of events which at first will cause her to be a target of public gossip, a witch hunt, and even a police investigation. It isn’t long though before Elsie, finally thrust out of her reclusive existence, decides to tell the world the real story of her life and how she became the notorious “Mad Mabel.” Thanks to a pair of small-time podcasters and her own actions and events, she gradually reveals her true self behind the prickly and intimidating exterior, and earns her neighbors’ good will, loyalty, and even love. And let’s not forget the influence of Persephone, a precocious 7-year-old whom Elsie describes as an “irritating little despot.” It is a story that is full of tragedy and injustice although there are some bright spots, so not unremitting. Elsie’s voice is so engaging and worldly-wise, I didn’t feel crushed by all that befell her. And of course, the knowledge that because she is finally telling her story, people will at last know the truth, was a lifeline. The book alternates between Then and Now. The Now parts, although there are some scary moments, provide a respite from her sad Then parts. Yet I was always OK with going back to Then because her story was so interesting and told with the wisdom of age. Plus, I wanted answers. (One of the answers I still want is who is that supposed to be on the cover of the book?)
The truths that are revealed by the podcast are pretty blockbuster, and one was a genuine shock. One reveal, I had guessed right away. In fact, I found it so obvious that I suspect Sally Hepworth never meant it to be a big secret from any careful readers. The fallout in the present time despite some devastatingly sad past occurrences, was overall good, if not great. I was perfectly fine that some of the outcomes turned out to be almost fairytale. I love that in all of Sally Hepworth’s books. She really puts you through the wringer, but, at least so far in the books I have read, it is all worth it. She is now in my tippy top echelon of favorite authors. I’ve loved all the books I’ve read by her and am grateful she still has some I have yet to read. I meant to stop at the 80% mark and leave the rest for another day. But I couldn’t put it down. I can’t remember the last time I was moved to tears at the close of a book.
One more quote: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”— Albus Dumbledore
I’m not warm, I’m not especially kind. But I can be strong.
I believe this is the first book of Sally Hepworth’s that really made it big. It’s the one that brought her to my attention. Despite great reviews, I avoided it for a couple of years, reading instead 2 later books by her which I thoroughly enjoyed. I assumed that if the book was about a Mother-in-Law she had to be Evil. That’s what the synopsis seemed to suggest as well. And if the Mother-in-law was evil, that meant the husband had to be either complicit, stupid, or weak. Now that’s fine in romantic woman’s fiction as our heroine will suffer or be deceived by said hubby but dump him on the way to a better life with another man who is worthy of her.
But this wasn’t so simple or predictable. First and foremost it is a study of characters. Not just one. In the first chapter we learn that Diana, the Mother-in-Law, is dead. At first it looks like suicide, and then it looks like murder. There are many confusing things about it which will not be answered until the last pages. The past is told in flashbacks by Diana and Lucy, the Daughter-in-law, in first person. They are joint protagonists even though Lucy is the only one still alive in the present and dealing with what turns out to be a murder mystery and investigation. At about a quarter in, I liked both of the two women who didn’t understand each other because they didn’t know what I, the reader, was learning. And as I learned more and more, I felt saddened by their adversarial relationship when they could have been allies and even friends. Such waste! Diana, Lucy’s mother-in-law, is not warm or kind, but she is a good woman who wants the best for those close to her. She just goes at it in a way that most people would disagree with. She adores her husband Tom and he adores her. She has founded a charity, and works very hard at it, to help down-on-their-luck pregnant immigrant women get the supplies and care they need. I interpreted Diana as having a borderline personality disorder perhaps partially caused by her difficult past. She seems to have developed an inability to feel or show empathy for those close to her. She is very complicated, confusing and mysterious. Lucy has married Ollie, Diana’s son. Lucy is also a good person: a bit of a free spirit, very nice, and with a strong moral center. She and Ollie love each other very much. Lucy’s wonderful mother died when she was only 13 and she meets her fiancé’s mother hoping that she and Diana will become close friends or even have a loving mother-daughter relationship. That hope does not last long. Their first meeting sets the pattern which is repeated over and over until near the end. Diana is very reserved and formal at their first meeting. Ollie asks his mother what she thinks about Lucy, and Lucy overhears Diana say “I think she’s fine.” She is very hurt by this “damning with faint praise” assessment. When Diana’s society friends explain that “Nothing good ever started from fine”, she doesn’t get it. To Diana,
“fine is an appropriate seal of approval for the son’s new girlfriend. Love is obviously too strong a word, and even like would be overstating after a mere evening together-Heaven forbid I be one of those overbearing women that fawned all over the new girlfriend begging to be best friends…. As far as I am concerned, If Lucy loved my son and he loved her she was fine by me. Absolutely fine“.
And of course she doesn’t know that Lucy overheard her comment. Not that she would really try to explain herself. Diana’s first impression of Lucy is that she has been spoiled and adored her whole life and so is rather weak. But Lucy is actually very strong, as Diana learns. And Lucy is not faultless in the rocky relationship. Diana makes such an unpleasant scene over the price of the wedding gown Lucy loves at the bridal shop, that she walks out embarrassed and hurt. But later, she realizes later that Diana did her a huge favor. Lucy never talks to Diana about it. Diana never tells Lucy that she didn’t like the dress not only because of the price, but because the dress did not reflect Lucy’s off beat fashion style and made her look “generic.” There were so many times a heart to heart between the two would have healed the breach. But Diana does not do heart to hearts. Only the reader is allowed to see Diana’s side of things, and even then she does things that are really inexcusable. Even when she becomes aware of her mis-steps she never goes back to set things straight. “She’s a good mother, I have to admit. It occurs to me that I’ve never told her that.” And she never does.
As the story goes on, Lucy and Ollie have children, and the breach between them grows very wide. Even, we are told, to the point of physical violence though we do not know the circumstances right away. So when Diana’s death looks like murder, all eyes turn to Lucy. Our suspicions turn to Ollie. Because though Ollie is a good person, he is weak and not all that bright. Diana recalls an incident involving Ollie and his sister Nettie in their pool when Nettie almost drowns trying to save her little brother:
That’s when I realized. Some people jumped in and tried to save someone who was in trouble; others did anything they could to save themselves. Ollie hadn’t meant to drown Nettie, he was simply following his instincts, just as she was following hers. My children had just shown me who they were.
By the end, I was desperate for Diana to see the light and for the two women to come to an understanding. I was intrigued by the mystery of Diana’s death and the fates of everyone in the family. I won’t say anymore but I found the ending more satisfying and hopeful than it had any right to be.
I was hovering around 4 stars until the final chapter. I can’t believe that I was surprised by the final reveal. Fooled again. It was the final shocker in a book in which I was successfully misdirected at every turn. How do these authors do it? How do they think of how to trick their readers? Or am I just blind and credulous? I did my best to imagine how the author was going to pull a fast one, but I didn’t guess correctly, did I? I really liked that the ending removed some mixed feelings I had about one of the main characters. So I bumped it up. I can’t quite give it 5 stars. Most thrillers have very disturbing content but this one involved child abuse. Mostly it was psychological and very cruel, and almost started to get repetitive and overdone. I can only take so much dread. But as soon as I thought it had crossed the line, a new distracting factor or surprise was introduced. It was very well-constructed, and there was just enough humor to relieve the tension every so often.
This is a dual timeline book wherein we trace the lives of our three protagonists both as children, in which the 3 “sisters” survive their horrific childhoods, and as adults as we see how their childhoods with their cruel foster mother have damaged them. And every so often we have the therapy sessions of an unknown (at first) person with a psychiatrist who appears to be a little “off”. And I mean the doctor, not the patient. The present-day plot is centered around what happens when the 3 get contacted by a police detective who wants to question the 3 women about some human bones that have been uncovered under the demolished house where the girls grew up.
It started out with a bang. Every time I had to take a break, I couldn’t wait to get back to it. Some books, as much as I enjoy them, don’t have that extra something special: I can put it down and I’m not all that compelled to pick it up again ASAP. All three of the attractive women were very different from each other but utterly devoted to each other. True sisters of the heart. One is kind and good, but insecure and vulnerable and afraid to open herself up to the possibility of a new family. One is funny and tough, but whose anger issues have reached a point that if she assaults a fellow human one more time, she will end up in prison. The last has control issues, OCD, and a drug problem. She has a very successful, even renowned, business and is married to an apparently nice guy. We learn soon enough that one of these women is a lot more damaged than the others. After a lull in the action, the stakes are raised for the 3 girls and their miserable lives with Miss Fairchild a little over halfway through. A few genuine mysteries develop in the past and the present. Meanwhile, in the present, one of the women’s lives is headed for disaster. The reader really starts getting some gasp-worthy shocks and surprises about 2/3 of the way through, and then it never lets up until the very final pages.
I don’t want to give up any spoilers, but can I say that everything ends up great on all fronts except one? In a very satisfactory conclusion, all questions were answered and all loose ends were tied up. It was a great ending. It was my kind of book. I definitely will be seeking out another of Sally Hepworth’s novels.
Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a free Uncorrected Digital Galley of this book in return for an unbiased review. This book will be published April 23, 2024.
“Can I say something?” he says. “I know you love your sister, but…” He shakes his head, sighs. “Something isn’t right about her.”
**spoilers**Seriously, don’t read this review unless you’ve already read the book, or have no plans to read it.
I don’t understand why all of the descriptions and promotional material for this book tout that there are two unreliable narrators in this psychological thriller about two twin sisters. Rose starts out portrayed as the caring, protective sister. She is telling her side of the story through a journal that her therapist has suggested she write to heal from the childhood abuse that she suffered at the hands of her cruel sadistic mother. Fern is a librarian with sensory processing issues. She finds loud noises, bright lights, and people being too close very uncomfortable. She does not pick up on social cues and takes people’s words literally. She is very awkward and sometimes embarrassing in her interactions with others, much to the readers’ entertainment. she reminded me a lot of Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
Although there was a niggling doubt (solely because of the “two unreliable narrators” reviews), I was pretty well convinced who the good sister and who the bad sister was was about a fifth of the way through. The first thing that tipped me off was that at one juncture, early on, Rose refers to “you”, a reader of what is supposed to be her private journal. If she’s expecting someone to read the journal, she must have an ulterior motive outside of self-therapy. Around that time, there is a suggestion that Rose might be gaslighting Fern over not feeding Rose’s dog while Rose is in London. Finally, we realize that the target of the mother’s abuse was always Rose, and hardly ever Fern. No person could emerge undamaged from being targeted like Rose supposedly was. Thus, Rose is outed whether she is telling the truth or telling lies. We only have Rose’s and the trusting Fern’s words to know Rose, while we come to see how Fern interacts with and how she is thought of by dozens of objective “outsiders.”
But even without that Fern is just totally lovable and responsible for a lot of humor in the book. The characters in the book respect and even love her or learn to love her despite her eccentric behavior. She also has a love story. The love interest is Rocco, who Fern calls “Wally” because he looked like the “Where’s Waldo” character when she first meets him. He is another one of Fern’s friends and advocates who endears himself to the reader right from the beginning. We learn very early on that he is much more than whom he seems on the surface.
Well before the halfway point all but the most oblivious reader will pretty much have come to some correct conclusions about Rose. The evidence has been building and continues to build. From there it starts to turn from a mystery into a thriller when we realize that Fern is in some kind of grave danger from her sister. There are no twists towards the end of the story, it’s just that the whole truth is revealed a layer at a time. We don’t understand until the concluding pages just how evil and mad Rose has been all of her life.
I really loved this page-turner for the suspense and tension, the humor, the growth that we see Fern achieve, and the sweet love story. I admire the portrayal of the sisters and the gradual reveal of their characters. We learn that part of Rose’s personality is Narcissism. The crowning revelation is the last entry in Rose’s journal which comes as a bombshell as to just how narcissistic and delusional she really is.**5 stars out of 5**
