Home Truths by Susan Lewis

‘How far would you go to keep your family safe’?


I have read some of Susan Lewis’s earlier novels and this one felt different to me. The writing always  takes hold and pulls you into the characters world, but this novel addresses so many contemporary social and political issues. It felt more like a world I could identify with; I have worked for over twenty years in mental health and I come up against these issues all the time. My client group is largely people with physical disabilities so the effects of the bedroom tax, PIP reforms, and now universal credit, have been a huge cause of depression and anxiety. It was great to see a contemporary novel tackle issues I feel so strongly about.

The novel opens with the shocking scene where Stephen is the victim of a vicious assault at the hands of a gang, including his own son. Liam left home after his drug addiction and friendships within a gang started to affect family life. It is an incident between Liam and his youngest son that leads to  Steve being attacked and we meet Steve’s family in the aftermath of his death. Angie is missing Steve but trying to keep strong and hold her family together, despite everything going wrong financially. As well as the younger son the couple have a teenage daughter, Grace. The family have lived a life very dependent on Steve and the goodwill of his business mentor. Steve contracted as a painter and decorator, but worked mostly with one property developer. Through him the family rent a home on the best estate in town, at a low cost and with all the features Angie has wanted. But Steve does not have life insurance and without his income Angie can’t keep on top of the bills. The rent is increased and despite having Universal Credit Angie can’t stop the debt piling up. She has a part time job running a local charity that works with homeless people, but it doesn’t pay well. It also makes it more difficult for her to ask for help, because she is meant to be the one with the answers. As life becomes more desperate Angie tries to hide her situation from everyone. They lose the dream home, sell their possessions and end up with the children at her sister’s and Angie sleeping in her car. How will the family come back from this and will Angie’s relationship with her eldest child Liam ever recover?

Despite the familiarity with the subject matter I found Angie’s character difficult to connect with. I seemed to identify more with Grace, her daughter. As a therapist, I do a lot of self- reflection and I wondered if I identified with her because my parents struggled financially when I was a teenager. I know how hard it is to be different from your peers and unable to enjoy the same clothes and activities. Their bereavement and financial struggles have left Grace especially vulnerable; she is angry with her Mum but also wants to help and tries to find ways of making money. This is where unscrupulous people can come in and exploit her anger by inciting that need to rebel, and urge to take matters into her own hands. We get the sense that the mysterious texter who offers to help isn’t who she claims to be. I couldn’t help but be scared for her.

This is a good read and maybe an introduction to some readers as to how tough it is out there once you need the safety net of the benefit system. It wasn’t quite as gritty as I was expecting, but perhaps that says more about me than the book! I think it did show that everyone is only a couple of misfortunes away from being on the streets. We all push things like sorting life insurance to one side, without realising how catastrophic the consequences can be. The home truths of the title allude to Angie understanding the truth of her situation and the inner realisation of just how far we’ll go to look after the people we love most.

Thank you to Harper Fiction for my proof copy of this book and for letting me to join the blog tour. See below for the next stops on the tour.

The Cliff House by Amanda Jennings

I often pick up books about Cornwall as it is a favourite haunt of mine. It’s a romantic, beautiful setting but it’s history of struggle between the haves and have nots goes back centuries. This tension between local and wealthy visitor still resonates through the pages of this book set largely in the 1980s.

Tamsyn is as local as it gets. Her grandfather worked the tin mines, her father was a lifeboat volunteer and her brother is struggling to find work that’s not seasonal. Tamsyn’s attachment to The Cliff House comes to a head in the summer of 1986. To her, the house represents escape, perfection and her last link to her father, who brought her here to swim in the pool when the owners were away. Her father felt rules were made to be broken and they both consider it madness to own such a slice of perfection overlooking the sea yet rarely visiting except for a few weeks in the summer. Now Tamsyn watches the Cliff House alone and views the Davenports as the height of sophistication. Their life is a world away from her cramped cottage, her Granfer’s coughing and his red spattered handkerchiefs and their constant struggle for money.

Tamsyn is firmly a have not. Her hero father died rescuing a drowning child and now she has to watch her mother’s burgeoning friendship with the man who owns the chip shop. Her brother is unable to find work but finds odd jobs and shifts where he can to put his contribution under the kettle in the kitchen. Mum works at the chip shop but is also the Davenport’s cleaner. She keeps their key in the kitchen drawer, but every so often Tamsyn steals it and let’s herself in to admire Eleanor Davenports clothing and face creams and Max’s study with a view of the sea. Yet, the family’s real lives are only a figment of her imagination until she meets Edie.

Edie Davenport is a disaffected teenager with heavy eye make-up, black clothing and a love of The Cure. The two girls hit it off and Tamsyn learns that Edie has been expelled from her exclusive girls school. She has a spiky relationship with her Mum and as readers we can see why. While Tamsyn seems oblivious to the problems of the family, the reader can see a family already disintegrating. Max hides away writing and is accused of having multiple affairs by his wife. Eleanor is an alcoholic, on medication for depression and seemingly paranoid about her husbands behaviour. As the summer goes on, their relationships worsen and we get a sense that the Davenports are the worst kind of rich people; to quote from The Great Gatsby, they are people who are careless of the lives of others. The summer party shows the couple at their decadent worst and it is fitting that the final acts of the novel occur surrounded by the detritus of that night.

 Tamsyn wishes her mum were more like Eleanor at times. She butters her up by helping with her make-up, painting her nails and letting her borrow her clothes. Yet she never sees her as an equal to her daughter. The scene where Tamsyn realises that she hasn’t been invited to the party, but is expected to work in the kitchen is particularly painful. I found myself very caught up with Tamsyn’s narrative - possibly because I remember being an awkward teenager from a poor background at a school full of middle class kids. I only start to question her motivations very late in the novel. I know she is becoming obsessed with the house and family, but underestimated how seriously she takes her link to house. As Edie meets Tamsyn’s brother Jago and their mutual attraction becomes clear, Tamsyn’s jealousy is obvious. There is a sense from here on that this entangled lives and simmering tensions will reach a crescendo - rather like Jago points out, the seventh wave is always the largest and comes crashing over the rocks below.

I won’t reveal the ending only to say it didn’t conclude the way I expected. I was left feeling like I’d underestimated some characters and I wanted to go back and read their sections again to see if they read differently now I knew the eventual outcome. I think, very cleverly, some characters were deliberately understated so that more volatile and explosive characters seemed to be driving the narrative. I felt left with the question of how we feel when we get what we’ve always wanted? Are we left haunted by what we had to do to succeed? And is our victory celebrated or largely empty? Ultimately, as s reader, it made me realise how much trust we place in our narrator and how effective it is when that trust is misplaced.

The Retreat by Sherri Smith

‘Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons. Each has her secrets to hide. And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing’.

The premise appealed to me. The idea of a retreat as the place of secrets and potential murder was to good to resist. My own idea of hell is going to a spa; especially with groups of women. I’ve been invited to hen weekends at spas. I hate them. The thought of sitting around in a dressing gown with women I’ve only just met fills me with horror. So, a novel exploring the dark side of the wellness industry seemed perfect for me and I have enjoyed others exploring the same experience like Liane Moriaty’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ or Mark Edwards ‘The Retreat’.

It took a while for me to get into the novel,  because I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. Each woman narrates her own chapter creating different perspectives on the story as it unfolds. Katie is the lynchpin of the group. She is a washed-up child star still living off her glory days as child sleuth Shelby Slade. Katie is rapidly working her way through her fortune and thinks back fondly to her manager AJ who looked after her. Unable to find work as an actor Katie has a void in her life that she fills by spending money. She has an unexplained scar on one cheek and I had the sense there was a story to unfold that would be as much of a revelation to Katie as it would be to me.

Ellie has suggested the retreat because she wants Katie to benefit and have a breakthrough. She is marrying Katie’s brother Nate and in her chapters we learn that they live under Katie’s penthouse in a building she owns. We learn that Katie is very dependent on her brother and there seems to be an underlying resentment over Nate having to support his sister so heavily. Ellie pushes the benefits of the ayahuasca tea ceremony, hoping that the spiritual journey will be an awakening for Katie. Early on I felt there were a few aspects of Ellie’s story that didn’t add up. She has no family around her and her British accent is questioned by people they meet. Ellie’s perfect exterior is hiding something darker.

Ariel is one of Katie’s friends and is set up as an unwelcome rival to Ellie. Ariel is overweight and low in confidence. She once slept with Nate and had hoped this would develop into a relationship. She is vulnerable and seems to be running away from a relationship with a married man. She drops  hints about something she might have done to her lovers pregnant wife and seems to be open to the transformation the retreat offers.

Carmen is also a friend of Katie’s but comes to the retreat from a totally different background to the others. She lives in the poor area of the city with her siblings and her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. She desperate wants to escape the poverty she’s in and can’t even afford to fix the boiler, even though she works long hours as a home care worker. She is her father’s carer and is struggling to support the family on her wage. She often has to ask Katie for hand-outs and is desperate for the self-care of a retreat but also susceptible to any opportunity to make money - even if it is illegal.

Mixing with these four are Dr Dave and his partner Naomi who facilitate the group and the other attendees. Simon and Marie are staying away from the main house in their own cottage; giving them the opportunity to keep their own secrets. The mysterious Lily recognises Katie right away and is her biggest fan, but is it her that leaves the Shelby Spade balloon in the grounds?

We’re never sure of the motives of any character and that hooked me. I love an unreliable narrator and here there are four. Because I’m a counsellor I was interested in the unraveling of these characters and their real inner stories. I thought Katie’s self realisation was well written and it kept me reading. Although I’d worked out early on which girl was hiding her true reasons for the retreat I still enjoyed watching it unfold and the denouement  still held surprises for me. I found myself more drawn in towards the middle and read the rest in one afternoon because the suspense had me hooked. This is a great exploration of toxic friendship and how vulnerable people are preyed upon by the unscrupulous within the well-being industry.

Thanks to Sarah Mather and Titan books for my gifted copy.