MUST READS
Welcome to my humble review section. Here are some dark tales that have captivated, inspired and mesmerised me of late...
THE OFF SEASON - Kelly Simmons
A tale of two voices
‘I found my mom’s body. Or I guess I should say her body found me.’
If the secret to an addictive story lies, in some great measure, in the power of the first line, then Kelly Simmon’s The Off Season begins to hook you from the outset with its own gripping opener.
Set in the fictional bay area town of Red Cliff in Maryland, at the centre of the story is a young girl, Savannah, who everyone calls Vann, and who was the one who discovered her mother drowned in the bay. From the very beginning Vann suspects that something more than an accident lies at the heart of tragedy and embarks on a journey towards the truth. The beauty of the story is found in Vann’s increasingly interdependent relationship with local police officer Nate Hunter who lives on a boat in the bay whilst running the small police department and harbouring his own unresolved history.
Vann, whose layers are increasingly laid bare through the inspired device of a number of diary entries as she is growing older, brings to mind other strong female characters such as Heather in Jess Lourey’s The Quarry Girls, Harriet in Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, and even Scout in Harper Lee’s seminal classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Simmons sums her up beautifully as ‘A young girl going all Harriet the Spy with her notebook.’
We meet a cast of colourful characters who are each brought to life with Simmon’s visceral prose and who could all, at any time, be more or less implicated in the death of Vann’s mother. But it is the magical, almost liminal setting and timeframe embedded within the title of the book itself that create the unique sense of secretive threat and danger pervading the entire story. The loss of Vann’s mother takes place during this ‘off season’ at Red Cliff. It is that moment between the tourist frenzy in the high summer and the lull afterwards with just the out of season permanent residents remaining. And if ever a novelist was able to harness the evocative power of setting as a character in its own right it is Kelly Simmons. From the moment we find Nate ‘sipping his first cup of coffee…listening to the waves lapping and halyards clinking’ through to portentous phrases such as ‘sometimes in the off season things wash up. Times change, and things are uncovered,’ the tension builds to a thrilling and twisty conclusion.
The growing trust between Vann and Nate moves from grudging to respectful to finally mutually protective with both of them filling the spoken and unspoken voids in their respective lives. It is these nuanced characterisations that make the protagonists and what’s at stake at the heart of the investigation leap vividly from the pages.
This is a compelling detective story, wrapped in the lyrical beauty of Simmons’ prose and leaves the reader with a shocking, unique and memorable resolution.
More reviews coming soon...
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