Book review: The Woman in my Home by C.R.Howell

Jon Gower

Don’t be put off by the slow, almost languorous pace of this book’s opening sections which suggest it’s one of those slow-boil, eke-out-the-red herrings sort of psychological thriller. It’s a book that confidently picks up pace as we go, moving up the gears one by one until it accelerates and accelerates. The author deftly and confidently ratchets up the pace throughout, even as the page-turning urgency of the plot fully takes hold and sets the thumb moving like a bank-teller counting notes.

Ostensibly a mystery about the circumstances of a terrible accident involving two-year-old Catrin –  and why her mother disappeared for almost a year as a consequence – it turns out to be about so much more. Elin, mother of Catrin and her sister Rhiannon returns home to find another woman, Greta, ensconced in the house. Greta has a very young baby and, as the novel unfolds, it turns out that the circumstances of its birth are not quite what Greta made them out to be.

Isolated

That’s true about pretty much everything in this terse, tense Wales-based thriller which is set in a bleak, wind-flensed, mountainous landscape where the weather is seemingly always wild and the land is ‘grassy in patches, slate-covered elsewhere’ and primarily in an isolated, suffocating house. But it is also set within close-knit village communities where young mothers offer essential support systems to each other and a busy stroll -on cast of characters, from midwives to desperate young women is well directed within the story.

Then there’s the domineering, controlling father of the children, who is not only an challenging figure in the present but is also seeking to take control of the past, shaping Elin’s memories and trying to seed the blame for Catrin’s accident as deeply in her mother as is possible.

Denial

The whole story is presented as if being told to Catrin’s sister Rhiannon, all punctuated by accounts of Elin’s sessions with the therapist, in which he tries to cut through the fog of forgetfulness, or denial which stops his patient from remembering her fostered childhood. There’s a very telling moment in this healing process when Elin is enocuraged by therapist Ben to bring a comforting item with her to their next meeting:

I wandered the aisles of a discount shop. What I was looking for, I didn’t know. There was nothing at home I considered a comforting object. Eventually, I came across some blankets, soft and fleecy. Their labels read: Super Soft Sherpa Blanket. I chose a pale-blue one, with white on the reverse, and took it to the till.

When she attends the next session she realises she should have cut off the label and price sticker. But she has no choice other than to sit there as she is, holding the discount-store ‘blanket upright on my lap like a sack of flour.’

In many ways this is an examination of motherhood and mothers, as one of the most brooding characters in The Woman in my House is David’s nain or grandmother, who tries to exert her own control, suggesting where her son learned such behaviour. The challenges of childbirth are superbly well done as are the evocations of domestic routines and school-going, even though the ones depicted here are often skewed by David’s baleful and sometimes threatening behaviour not to mention Elin’s fragility after abandoning her child at a time of need.

Turbocharged

The novel has some great turbocharged set-pieces, including a desperate night-time chase on a storm-lashed coast and a nail-biting period when Rhiannon goes missing in the woods and only her rucksack and teddy bear is found. This latter is made all the more tense when there’s a false sighting of the six-year-old and you can feel the palpable dread settling in everyone’s heart as the hours pass and a second night settles.

Tightness

I’ve steadfastly refused to give too much of the plot away but I’m glad to report the book ends with an epiphany – one involving woodlice, which is pretty unexpected – which helps leaven or dispel the tightness in the reader’s chest from having to cope with manhunts for missing children, traumatic past lives and equally traumatic present, daily life. It would perhaps make a very good film but for now we have to settle for the written version.

The Woman in My Home by C.R.Howell is published by Joffe Books and is available from all good bookshops.