Julia gives up her life in the city to join her partner, Hardy, on his first assignment as a new constable in the RCMP. At loose ends in a small town in northern Alberta, and short of money, Julia takes on the running of the town newspaper, The Observer. Julia finds herself in over her head: in her job at the newspaper, in negotiating the vulnerability of life as an “RCMP wife”, in coping with Hardy’s inability to talk about the stresses in his life. While his mental health spirals, she can only observe helplessly from the sidelines. Julia is a woman living a life of loneliness, burdened by the bulk of caring for her home and children. Hardy is overworked, a man rarely home and when he is, usually sleeps in preparation for another long, wearying day (or night) at a job that is eating his soul.
This is a quiet kind of novel: there is no huge story or climax, no big drama. It is a story of a very ordinary life, of a wife left mostly to her own devices and not participating in her husband’s life. Hardy is a shadow of a character because he is so rarely there. The reader does not feel his voice except through Julia’s reactions to events “off-screen”. The danger the reader sees hanging over Julia never really touches her and is resolved, again off-screen, reappearing only to happen to others in the epilogue. For Julia and Hardy, the struggles are resolved quietly. This is not to say their struggles are not real, poignant, and powerful. The Observer richly evokes the life and culture of RCMP members, the horrific and beautiful sides of life they must witness every day, and the toll it takes on their mental health. Suicide and PTSD are not swept under the rug. This book also reveals the reality of the pall this life casts over police families, from the spectre of their loved one never returning home after a shift, to the personal threats from criminal elements. Juxtaposed against this are the beauty of rural northern Alberta, the welcome richness and humour of life in small communities, and the support to be found from people who understand.
The Observer feels like a memoir and for good reason. Author Marina Endicott lived this life with her husband, an RCMP member in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in the 1990s, the location of the shocking murder of four RCMP officers in 2005. Her personal experience gives this beautifully written book a ring of authenticity only lived experience can. Who else could understand the thoughts of wives (and husbands) figuring out – without any greed playing into it – how best to spend the life insurance money and how to live without their loved ones? An almost languorous tale, this is a book that is thoughtful, poignant, and eye-opening.
MARINA ENDICOTT’s much-celebrated novels include Good to a Fault, The Little Shadows, Close to Hugh and The Difference. Endicott lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
- Publisher : Knopf Canada (Sept. 12 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1039003567
- ISBN-13 : 978-1039003569
