The novel opens with a dinner party hosted by Robyn and Cat, for 3 other couples: Robyn’s old friend, Willa, and her somewhat obnoxious boyfriend; Robyn’s beloved and nerdy brother Michael and his fascinating girlfriend, Liv; and Cat’s brother, Nate and his French girlfriend, Claudette.
Right from the start, there are tensions Willa is haunted by the loss of her sister, Laika, who vanished 22 years ago, when she was just thirteen; newcomer to the group, Liv, may just resemble Laika. But Willa soon stops imagining Liv is her sister, and turns to the latest arrival, Claudette, and thinks Claudette is the missing Laika. Clearly, Willa habitually thinks she sees her sister, because she has never stopped looking for her. Jamie, her boyfriend with whom she is trying so hard to have a baby, is less than sympathetic:
“’Willa darling’, he says, ‘are you completely off your fucking trolly? I mean, Christ almighty, what was that? You can’t just walk up to random women and accuse them of being your sister. It makes you look like a lunatic” (p109).
Liv turns out to be a psychologist studying memory corruption. She lists factors which influence how we remember events – drugs, alcohol intake, health, sleep, prior events, also,
“state of mind, wish fulfilment, stress. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Guilt. […] transference of memory, by which I mean absorbing other people’s memories, taking possession of them, as if they belonged to you” (p22)
Willa is fascinated of course, given her own memories of her missing sister as well as the conditions under which she went missing.
Alas, this promising line about memory corruption doesn’t survive beyond the dinner party discussion, and peeters out. The novel goes on to explore Willa’s relationship with Robyn, then later follows the missing Laika’s story as well. It does a fairly good job in holding the reader’s interest as we learn about Willa’s hidden and murky family life, and also catch a glimpse of Roybn’s contrasting healthy family life. The novel tries to speak from a number of voices, Robyn’s, Willa’s, Laika’s, but there is no difference in the voices, they all sound the same. The chapter headings tell us which woman’s perspective is being put forward, but Easter Collin’s writing is not sufficiently strong enough for readers to hear different styles and voices. The writing is in fact fairly pedestrian, but manages to tell the story engagingly enough even if the style is unmemorable and unquotable. The consciousness is fairly cliché, the thought process unoriginal. But the story telling more or less works.
Willa’s father and boyfriend are pretty much villainised male characters depicted as brash and dominating and sexist, while the other two minor male characters, Nate and Michael, are again so alike in their mildness and niceness they are just cardboard figures too. The twist in the tale is rather too much of a coincidence for this reader, too convenient, too implausible. However, the book comes to a rather quick ending, wraps up, and is all done before you know it. Not particularly satisfying. As if the author just ran out of steam.
There were a lot of promising angles at the start of this novel, about breakage and repair and renewal, about memory transference and corruption, but none of these really were followed up on. The book descended into cliches, almost as if the author couldn’t manage to move beyond the theme of a woman obsessed with the loss of her sister. Even the domestic abuse was rather hackneyed in the telling. None of it rang particularly true. The novel pretty much turned into chick lit towards the end, such a pity, but at least it was a quick read, not particularly lengthy.
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