Glittering facades hide trouble and strife in two page-turning novels
CAROLINE Overington and Barossa author Kim Lock depict troubled marriages behind glittering facades.
Books & Magazines
Don't miss out on the headlines from Books & Magazines. Followed categories will be added to My News.
CRIME
The One Who Got Away, Caroline Overington, HarperCollins $29.99
FICTION
Like I Can Love, Kim Lock, Macmillan $29.99
THE biggest surprise in Overington’s latest novel — obligatory twist at the end notwithstanding — is its location. For the Walkley Award-winning journalist, whose novels are as Australian as Paul Kelly’s songs, has based it in California.
That’s not the only disappointment. Previous works (such as The Ghost Child and Matilda is Missing) have imagined the stories behind the sort of headlines that make everyone shudder; abused children, warring parents, the disadvantaged and disaffected. This tale, too, could be gleaned from the media — but the shrill and sensationalised scandal sheets.
When Loren Franklin meets David Wynne-Estes, she can’t believe her luck. He’s handsome, wealthy and from the right side of the tracks of her hometown. She takes to his lifestyle like the proverbial duck to water. Just a few years later, he’s in hot water and she’s in international waters — missing off a cruise ship.
In an ensuing trial, the judge sums it up neatly: “The case had everything: David was rich and Loren was beautiful. The mistress was a siren and the girls were angelic. Here was the evidence that awful things could happen to beautiful people; that the big house and the expensive cars can be that old cliche, the glittering facade. Plus, sex tapes!’’
The vivid sex scenes are possibly the best in the tawdry tale — all the more arresting for being related retrospectively during a tell-all television interview.
The publicity blurb likens The One Who Got Away to Gone Girl, the massive seller of a few years ago. And it is a good thriller, just lacking the pathos that made Overington’s earlier novels so memorable.
We’re on more familiar territory with South Australian author Kim Lock’s novel about the suicide of a young mother. As the shifting narrative of before and after the deed reveals, Jenna Rudolph’s life was also a facade.
The tall and commanding Ark Rudolph sweeps her off her feet at the pub one night. Soon they’ve set up house at his vineyard outside Penola. It’s a seven-kilometre trip to town; a short stretch that becomes increasingly out of reach for Jenna.
With a reasonableness that is chilling, he slowly assumes control of her every moment — an insidious abuse of no obvious bruises but an inexorable stripping away of the spirit.
This is Barossa-based Lock’s second novel. She has said she always wanted to be a writer and has contributed to several publications, often on the topic of breastfeeding, for which she is a volunteer counsellor. Which makes her sound worthy and potentially dull. Rest assured, this is a highly engaging tale.
The after sections are seen through the perspective of Jenna’s lifelong best friend. They grew up steps away from each other in Mt Gambier, as close as sisters, although as the fabulously funny Fairlie Winter observes wryly: “Haven’t you noticed that for twenty-odd years, I’ve been obese and black and you’re skinny and white?’’ She adds a layer of levity to what could otherwise have been a rather dispiriting read.
As well as the pitch-perfect relationships Lock chronicles, her forte is imagery. She sketches lush word pictures that capture the imagination: A Tonka truck stalled by the stairs; river red gums that shed their bark like rags.
Top marks for an absorbing story that, curiously, would sit well within Overington’s usual oeuvre.
Originally published as Glittering facades hide trouble and strife in two page-turning novels