You might never look at family mealtimes the same way again once you’ve witnessed what goes on at the kitchen table in Where She Went.
The ‘heroine’ of the book is news reporter Melanie Black who just happens to wake up dead one morning. Yes, that’s right, she wakes up dead in bed, next to a man she doesn’t recognise and realises no one can see or hear her. Trapped in the house with Peter and his family she has to piece together the story of her own disappearance and death.
As you can imagine, career girl Mel is more than a bit annoyed at being bumped off and at being forced to endure the dull day-to-day domestic routine of Peter, his wife and their little boy Adam. Mel couldn’t be more different to obedient Eve and watching the little homemaker behave like the perfect 1950s housewife is a sort of cruel and unusual torture in itself.
Some of the key action takes place around the kitchen table where Peter exercises his own type of unpleasant control over his eager-to-please wife. For him, mealtimes aren’t just an opportunity to eat, they enforce his idea of how an ideal family should behave and how a devoted wife should act. Mel, of course, has nothing but scorn for Eve’s carefully prepared breakfasts with their perfectly boiled eggs and loose-leaf tea in a teapot, or for Eve’s beautifully made sponge cakes and brightly hosted lamb shank dinners.
Peter punctuates mealtimes with subtle acts of psychological abuse, his little ‘pass or fail’ tests where a soft-boiled egg that’s just a little bit too hard for a toast soldier dip is a careless symbol of a wifely failure that deserves punishment.
Anxious Eve is forced to smile through these endurance events while, out in the world, the news of Mel’s disappearance has made the headlines and a police search gets underway.
As Mel’s memory returns, and she begins to remember the last night of her life, it becomes clear that Peter’s capable of much more than petty acts of emotional violence. But Mel herself is no angel and she’s not above playing a few little games herself, while she kills time before she decides on her method of revenge. Imagine an invisible and uninvited guest at your kitchen table with an axe to grind– that’s Melanie – and she likes to whisper things in your ear, even if you don’t realise it. Now that’s probably enough to make anyone lose their appetite!
Thanks for stopping by to share you food for thought, Beverley!
And look for her new ebook - HALFWAY - out May 10th.
And look for her new ebook - HALFWAY - out May 10th.
You can find Beverley here:
Comments
Post a Comment