Published
by Apollo,
3 May 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-78854124-4 (HB)
Kay and Ben, the main
protagonists in The Underneath, are
haunted by past traumas that intrude into their present relationships. Kay, a journalist whose professional life was
spent reporting from East African war zones, has left this dangerous career to
focus on her family. She feels uncertain
about her role as wife and mother, and domestic tensions are evident from the
beginning of the book, as she negotiates a family holiday in Vermont with documentary
film-maker husband Michael, and her two young children Freya and Tom.
Ben is an inhabitant of Vermont.
He makes a living from felling trees and drug-trafficking, and lives
with Shevaunne, a drug addict whom he despises, but with whom he stays because
of the bond he has developed with her son Jake, a selective mute. The author weaves their two narratives
together, whilst seamlessly revealing their individual troubling
backstories. Inevitably, Fay and Ben,
become involved with each other, but the consequences of this new entanglement
places them both in jeopardy.
The novel tackles difficult contemporary issues such as child
abuse and drug culture, as well as the cold bloodied destruction of
individuals, whole communities, animals and the land itself. The human beings in the story are damaged, flawed,
often masochistic and sometimes ferocious in their brutality. The tight plot is punctuated by the inner
sufferings that torment Kay and Ben as the thriller accelerates towards an ending
that is simultaneously terrifying and satisfying.
Finn’s story is as provocative as it is horrific. Global atrocities are described alongside
private disasters which accumulate to become smaller scale, but equally destructive,
tragedies for those involved. The author
explores realities many of us would rather not grapple with, yet she achieves
this without ever becoming didactic. The
beautiful prose of the narrative subverts subject matter that disturbs and shocks.
This is truly hard-boiled crime fiction, savage, visceral and at times
distressing. Be prepared for an
unsettling tale of cruelty and suffering, but one that finally champions
qualities of love and hope that survive against all the odds.
The
Underneath is an extraordinary and challenging book, and one that I could
not put down.
------
Reviewer:
Dorothy Marshall-Gent
Melanie Finn
was
born in Kenya, where she spent the first twelve years of her life. She was
educated in the United States and has lived and worked on four continents. She
has worked as a screen writer and journalist, and is the founder and director
of the Natron Health Projecy, which brings health care to Maasi communities of
Tanzania. Her first book Away from You was published in 2004.
Dot Marshall-Gent
worked
in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a
paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s
College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties. She completed
a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London
and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues. Dot
sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being
addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.
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