Review: "Into The Darkest Corner" by Elizabeth Haynes

Some books are unputdownable. Not many. A few. This one is one of them. It is an absolutely gripping story and from the very first page I was hooked and kept on reading to find out more. It is a story about domestic abuse and the awful consequences that it can have, how life is never the same again. Genre-wise it is somewhere between a mental disorder novel and a psychological thriller but mostly it is the last one. 


Catherine spends her life catering to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that is keeping her from living. By all means, she is surviving but living she is not. Every day she triple checks (or more) the locks on her door, her windows, the front door. If she fails to check it correctly, she has to do it all over again. And sometimes her world falls apart and she descends into a full-scale panic attack. The descriptions of living with OCD are scary in their truth, the way the disorder drives her life and dictates every little action. For a long time Catherine has been living alone with her disorder, not telling anyone about it though some are bound to have guessed it. Then a  new neighbour moves in, a psychologist, and he recognizes her symptoms and offers her a friendly shoulder to lean on and advice on how to get help. 


So far so good. 


The story is told in two tracks - one is set in 2008 and one in 2004. The Catherine in the 2004 story is a very different young woman. Outgoing, vivacious and full of life, she lives life as a single girl to the max - partying and having fun. Then she meets the gorgeous Lee who is very keen on going from date to full-on boyfriend and within months of their initial meeting, they are to all intents and purposes living together. However, something is not quite right. Lee is sometimes gone for days, working a job that he is very secretive about and sometimes Catherine gets the feeling that he is watching her, keeping tabs on her. 
Then one day he hits her for the first time and from then on the relationship becomes more and more violent until the day he almost kills her.... 


In 2008, Lee is a serving a three-year long prison sentence for the violence he inflicted on Catherine while she is serving a life-sentence in the prison that is OCD, worrying about the day when Lee will be released. 


This is a really really difficult book to read because it isn't (as so many psychological thrillers and crime fiction novels) something far off. This could happen to your or to your friends. Domestic abuse is an underreported crime that still smacks of taboo and I take my hat off to Haynes for having written such a strong novel about it. The description of the isolation that Lee manages to put Catherine in is what scared me the most - again because it was so incredibly believable. His psychopathic personality charms her friends into thinking that she is the one with the problem and thus he gets space, peace and quiet to beat her and treat her just as he wishes. 


Well-written, well put together with lots of page-turning moment and a good pace, this is the perfect read for a lazy weekend or to bring with you on holiday. 

Read it if: You are a fan of believable psyhcological thrillers. You prefer your crime fiction well-written and clever. You want to read a truthful representation of life with OCD. 

Buying Books - at Work!

This week The Book People made Thursday a very special day at work for me because they set up a charity book sale just a few metres from my desk! Obviously I was one of the first people there - having circled the area of the sale several times while they were setting up. I found some really really good stuff, here is what I bought:

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
From BookPeople.co.uk: Set in Oregon in 1851, The Sisters Brothers are the notorious professional 1850s Gold Rush killers Eli and Charlie. On their way to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm, they experience a series of violent and unsettling experiences. Bickering brothers who are very different, Charlie will kill anyone for money, while Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. When they finally meet Hermann in California, they discover he is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula that could make them all very rich. A gripping, stark and sad story about lies and loyalty that is full of dark humour, this is an emotional but exciting second novel from the award-winning Patrick deWitt, author of 2009's Ablutions.

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
From BookPeople.co.uk: Catherine has been enjoying the single life for long enough to know a good catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic, spontaneous - Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell. But there is a darker side to Lee. His erratic, controlling and sometimes frightening behaviour means that Catherine is increasingly isolated. Driven into the darkest corner of her world, and trusting no one, she plans a meticulous escape. Four years later, struggling to overcome her demons, Catherine dares to believe she might be safe from harm. Until one phone call changes everything. This is an edgy and powerful first novel, utterly convincing in its portrayal of obsession, and a tour de force of suspense.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
From The Guardian: If you want shopping at Bendel's, gin martinis at a debutante's mansion and jazz bands playing until 3am, Rules of Civility has it all and more. If you want something original that doesn't borrow at all from Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Great Gatsby or even Boardwalk Empire, you might be a little disappointed. Me, I lapped it all up ... In the opening chapter it's 1966 and Katey's at an exhibition looking at a picture of the man who changed everything for her: Tinker Grey. She is immediately transported back three decades to the night she first met him – on the eve of the most memorable year of her life. Tinker is enigmatic, adorable and lives his life according to George Washington's Rules of Civility. Except that he definitely hasn't read the last rule: "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."