By Harriett Lane

ISBN: 031636987X
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Publication Date: 01/06/2015
Format: Audio
My Rating: 3.5 Stars

 

 

Title: Her

Author: Harriet Lane

Genre: Psychological Thriller (or so they say)

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: January 6, 2015

Format: Paperback ARC via Goodreads

 

Synopsis

 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

 

My review (published at Read, Run, Ramble):

 

Thank you Little, Brown and Company via Goodreads for providing me with an early copy of this book!

 

Okay, this book had tons of promise – the premise is intriguing and suspenseful! How could these girls know one and other? What could have gone so wrong? What would drive one of them to go to such lengths while the other doesn’t even remember their relationship? So many questions; so many paths this book could take.

 

And it didn’t take any of them.

 

First, I didn’t love the writing; it felt disjointed and stunted most of the time. The chapters jump from one woman’s POV to the next (Nina and Emma), but not in a way that works for the story. Basically, something happens in the story and is told in one woman’s POV, then Lane turns it around and tells the exact same story, with very little variance, from the other woman’s POV. It just didn’t work for me and I love that type of storytelling – it is normally one of my favorite modes of getting all the details in a novel.

 

Not only did the writing not get there for me, but the storyline took a rather boring turn. It isn’t until about three quarters of the way through the book when readers learn how Nina knows Emma and why she’s being so manipulative, secretive, vengeful, and downright creepy. And the reason/secret is silly and inconsequential in my opinion.

 

Next, we have the ending. When I looked down and realized I had approximately 7 pages left in the book and there was no lead up to an ending in sight, I knew things probably weren’t going to conclude very well. I was right. The ending is abrupt and awkward – it just jumps out and happens and leaves you wondering what in the hell just happened and why. Especially after having found out the “secret” a couple chapters back and that secret being so underwhelming.

 

Sadly, I cannot recommend this book even though it had so much promise.

I was provided with an ARC of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I am not compensated for any of my reviews.

 

Her, Harriet Lane's second book is, like her debut Alys, Always, a literary psychological thriller. If you're wondering what that means, it means the thrills and the tension are ratcheted so tight as to be invisible and the horror cloaked in the everyday language of the mundane.

 

It also means I happen to like it. Very much so.

 

Emma is your everyday middle-class London mum - she has a young son, is pregnant with her second child, and she's struggling with the standard problems of that demographic.

 

Nina is an artist with a late-teenaged daughter; she remembers Emma, and what Emma did.

 

Alternating between the two characters, the reader is given Emma's story, that of domestic worries and mislaid items, of a new friend whose confidence and sophistication Emma wishes she could emulate; and Nina's story, that of long-held anger and opportunities engineered. 

 

Her is a tremendously quiet book and it's there its power lies. The way Nina sidles her way into Emma's life, and the almost-desperation with which she is greeted, is harrowing in its simplicity. The domestic scene provides a set-up rich with potential. The most terrifying things are those we believe can happen: it's why I've never been scared by Stephen King but still think of The Handmaid's Tale with dread. Lane exploits the everyday and in Nina writes a character whose terror lies in the ease with which she manipulates Emma, and the utter relentless normality.

 

Which leads me to my complaint - I'm honestly not sure if I think the grand reveal is brilliant or hopeless. On the one hand it's chilling, deftly giving us the measure of Nina to set up the final scenes (oh! the details! those tiny, tiny details!); on the other, it's mundane and pointless (but that is *why* it works).

 

Pushed, I come down on the side of brilliant, but those expecting a psychological thriller with a dramatic endgame or similar will likely find this is not the book for them. In a world which appears to be swimming with domestic psych thrillers, Lane is an easy author to pass over for the more obvious terrors of The Silent Wife, or Into The Darkest Corner, but anybody who found those rather too packed with melodrama, Her should be your next book. 4 stars.

 

 

Received a copy of Her by Harriet Lane through the First Reads Giveaway program in exchange for an honest review

"I almost feel sorry for her now. So easy to feel sorry for someone whose life is full of such tasks and aspirations. Lying here, in her place, on her bed, my head on her pillow, it is all pitifully clear: Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy - and yet she's entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else's accrues.'You never asked for this, did you, Emma? You didn't know it would be quite like this.'
Ah, well. We all have our crosses to bear."

Nina is panicked/impassioned at the sight of Emma, she is relieved to have finally found her after all these years. At first Emma is jealous of Nina's perceived freedom while she is inundated with her own shortcomings as a trapped, regimented, forever at beck and call mother. In all her years she didn't imagine that her life would end up like this. Intellectual and graceful Nina, drab and dishevelled Emma what could these two possibly have in common. Nina sees a naivety, a purity in Emma and gets a nostalgic feeling when around her, Emma sees a freedom, an elegance in Nina that has all but escaped her very own life. Some people have said that strangers have the best candy, this book will make you think twice about who you invite to a dinner party and with whom you become friends with in the first place. Lock the door and throw away the key, like you tell children; safety first, because sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Nina Bremner is a locally-successfully painter of English landscapes with her own studio in the downtown area. At one point, a long, long time ago Nina was married to an enlightening man named Arnold and together they had a child named Sophie. Overtime the marriage fell apart and Arnold moved across the pond leaving Nina behind with their seventeen year old daughter, but also leaving Nina a positively-changed woman. Arnold helped Nina in understanding what he saw in her the characteristics she didn't even know she possessed. Liberating her from her tiring father, her own personal faults and walking aside her as she embraced a life filled with existence. Once she felt complete she had to leave Arnold for he knew far too much. Nina eventually got back into the dating scene and during the course of the novel she has a long-term partner named Charles who also happens to be twenty years older.

At present, Nina gets little attention from career-driven Charles or her oh so typical teenage daughter Sophie. With respect to Sophie, Nina feels like she is losing hold of her day-by-day, minute-by-minute. The person she is getting a lot of attention from is one she could do without. Nina's father, who she refers to as Paul, is a man that envisions himself as omniscient. A self-absorbed man that wanted, no needed to have all eyes on him and excitement wherever he went. Nina regards his theatrical nature, his desperation, as tiring, as wasteful, destructive and over time develops a bitterness towards him that only grows stronger from early adolescence to present day. Since her parents divorce, her mother Helen has become a self-loathing and reclusive old woman who filled her free time with various distractions but once they were gone she became enveloped in sadness. As you can see Nina is definitely missing an emotional outlet and when the paint starts to dry she will need another release.

"I once heard someone on the radio saying that a bee is never more than 40 minutes away from starving to death, and this fact has stayed with me because it seems to have a certain personal resonance. My children are in a perpetual proximity to catastrophe: concussion, dehydration, drowning, or sunstroke. Keeping them safe requires constant vigilance.
I've turned into one of those mothers, full of terror."

Emma Hall nee Nash is drowning in the responsibilities brought on by parenthood and feels as if she is fading into obscurity in the process. At once a free-woman with great successes in the television industry, today it seems like ages ago, and like it happened to a different person altogether. At forty-something Emma was a little late to parenthood, but the demands of her career made it more responsible for her to clearly focus on one thing than playing one off the other. Assuming she could get back to her occupational responsibilities once the children have left the nest, Emma and Ben decide that it's better late than never and make the decision to start the baby-making process. Emma has an energetic and quite particular 3 year old boy named Christopher, and a 6 month old little baby girl Cecily. Between sticky fingers, bedtime stories, stained shirts, and restless nights one would hope that loving husband would offer relief. Unfortunately for Emma she is the tie that binds this family together and day after day as a compassionate reader your hoping she doesn't fray. She desperately wants to get back to her day job, is envious of what Ben deems as a bad day at work, but realizes that her professional life in TV is over and motherhood is what is in store.

" 'I never realised how much mess is involved in just living,' I say, with a little laugh, giving Christopher a matchbox of raisins and lifting him out of the chair. 'You know: just making him a meal is the act with a thousand circumstances: all the peeling and cooking and cooling down and cutting, and then afterwards all the scraping and rinsing and wiping and sweeping. One stone, all these bloody ripples. Just the act of tidying up the chaos seems to generate more chaos. I open the cupboard to get out the mop, and when my back is turned he scatters clothes pegs all over the house, or hides the Hoover attachments in the recycling box. Or I find him wandering around clutching the bottle of bleach...' "

This story is indulgent in adjectives and is beautifully-written in response, but lacks an ebb and flow in pace that makes it incredibly slow, plodding and difficult to concentrate at times. My initial feeling was a friendship-driven "Hand That Rocks The Cradle" with orchestrated efforts to insert yourself into the lives of others with periodic manipulations along the way. What you get is a prolonged relationship where nothing seems obvious until it seems to be too late. With the author's continued pace meandering between the lives of two characters, it is hard to have expectations for the conclusion, and although I can appreciate the ending, I still remain dissatisfied with the execution. I had high hopes after reading the first few sections and the grip it held on me, however; the remainder with all of the repetition and little differentiation left plenty to be desired. Which you see with these characters is how envy at one point in life can become a type sympathy when you see the "regression" of what once was an engaging personality. The loss of ownership of one's own life can lead you to living vicariously through that of another. This book will leave many people wanting more but there is definitely an audience for people who enjoy the psychologically-complex books that puts you inside the mind of what makes some people tick.

"Over time, I've come to see that so much of a personality boils down to confidence: whether you have it, or not. In many cases, it's really all that counts. All there is. I started with very little, but found it as an adult, and through Arnold, through motherhood and all those years when Sophie needed me so passionately. I'd guess Emma, having started with plenty of confidence, has gradually lost it. You couldn't say we complement each other, exactly; but perhaps in some strange way she complements me."

I came across this book last year when Fully Booked Gateway branch had a renovation sale wherein EVERYTHING is discounted with 50% off the original price. I went to the shop on the 3rd or 4th day of the sale so, unfortunately, almost all the good titles were already taken. I bought this along with 2 other books, The Fortunes Of Indigo Skye and The Unfinished Angel. To be completely honest, I only bought this book mainly because it has a pretty cover. Also considering that the book blurb is nowhere to be found. Only short reviews can be seen at the front and back of the book. I trusted the reviews and the pretty book cover. But damn, I was so wrong for having great expectations from this book.

This book talked about the general vulnerability of humans and the lengths and extremities of the things they will do to get what they want.

The book is relayed from the perspective of the main character, Frances Thorpe, who's life is so dull and uneventful until she came across an accident involving Alys Kyte. Well I really find her boring as hell and monotonous. No wonder her life is so uninteresting. I found a hard time calculating Frances and what she was up to. At first I thought, even though she's boring as fuck, she's an entirely nice person. But meh. I think because her life is just so dull, it made her do things that would give her the attention she never had. So, as I'm starting to near the end of the book, all I could honestly think of is how much of an attention whore Frances Throrpe is and how much she really wanted to squeeze into the life of the Kytes, which required a whole lot of effort from Frances. But then in the end, she got what she wanted so hurrah for her, I guess.

On the upside, I liked Harriet Lane's writing style. She put into details the feel and picture of the story although sometimes it was too much and was getting in the way of the actual story. So all in all, I'll give it two stars. I was really supposed to rate it with only 1 star but then I really loved the book cover so I'll add up another star.