Jude has felt unloved all her life: by her cruel and charismatic father, by her brilliant and distant mother, by her jealous younger sister. The family cottage on their private island was the one place she feels she must have had some happiness. It had been the place they have all come to – more and more of them as the family expanded to include boyfriends, husbands, grandchildren and odd friends, and even after her father left her mother – but Jude hasn’t been there in nearly two years.
“This is a dark and moody book, almost gothic, although an island on a northern Ontario lake stands in place of the brooding manor house on an English moor.”
When Jude’s father vanishes, her mother, slipping further and further away on the tide of dementia, demands that Jude must go to the island to find her father’s will. April is too early for cottage season, but Jude has personal reasons to go: perhaps among her mother’s secret things she will find the proof in old family photos that she was once loved. Then a vicious storm slashes in, tearing away her boat and her only escape from the island, its memories and its questions. How did her father come by his fortune? Who is her mother’s mysterious friend Eve and why was she a constant companion in this family retreat? What in her past has caused Jude to constantly sabotage her own life with alcohol and destructive behaviour? Why is Jude’s mother so convinced her father is dead?
This is a dark and moody book, almost gothic, although an island on a northern Ontario lake stands in place of the brooding manor house on an English moor. The pace is slow at first, the layers of this very complex onion only gradually revealing – and sometimes concealing – the truths. While sometimes confusing, Porter makes brilliant use of the unreliable narrator in her main character Jude. We only have Jude’s point of view, only her recollection of memories and events, only her perception of what is happening, what she is seeing, smelling, hearing, and those are severely impacted by her pain and the alcohol she uses to blunt it. Even Jude questions her own sanity. Is Jude in danger or the danger?
So much of this story is delivered in hints and side references. Only Jude knows the past leading up to her visit to the island; only she knows why she hasn’t been back in nearly two years. It is for the reader to play detective and piece together what has and is happened, what is truth and what is only Jude’s imagination. It speaks to Porter’s mastery that she is able to weave this story to it’s tragic conclusion so subtly, and even that end is lush with unanswered – but satisfying – questions.
Anna Porter is the award-winning author of ten books, both fiction and nonfiction, most recently Deceptions and In Other Words: How I Fell in Love with Canada One Book at a Time. In addition, she writes book reviews, opinion pieces, and stuff. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has received the Order of Ontario. Visit her at AnnaPorter.ca or connect with her on Twitter @AnnaPorter_Anna.
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster (Sept. 5 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668017709
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668017708