A well-constructed, lively read with just
enough bite to keep the reader engaged throughout. (Review by Margaret von
Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Gail Schimmel’s novel, The Accident, is told through the voices of four characters, each
dealing in their own way with the same contemporary events, though two of them
also have to contend with what happened in the past.
Catherine’s way of coping is to exist
rather than live – growing up, her daughter Julia thought she was a zombie. But
back when Julia was an infant, Catherine was in the accident of the title which
left her husband in a more than 20 year-long coma, and all she wants to do is
see Julia happy and settled so that she can finally opt out and stop even going
through the motions. Julia, however, has a knack for making wrong choices.
Her main wrong choice in the novel is to
fall for her new best friend Claire’s husband Daniel. This, of course, is
pretty rough on Claire, a high-achieving working mother, and it also worries
Catherine, who sees the situation as possibly compromising Julia’s future and
her own long-term plans. But it does mean that Catherine has to engage a little
more fully with the world around her – a good thing.
Of course, this being the kind of
ultimately feel-good fiction that it is, there are plenty of good things going
on, particularly in the field of making the characters re-evaluate their
present lives and come to terms with their pasts, some of the details of which
are slowly revealed as we go along. Well, let’s say three-quarters of the
characters do the re-evaluation. One, who is rather obviously flagged from the
start as being a major pain, does find it all rather more difficult.
The four protagonists are a little
relentlessly clever and funny, despite all the disasters they meet with. For
me, the two most appealing are Catherine and Claire whose problems are at least
not entirely of their own making. But altogether The Accident is a well-constructed, lively read with just enough
bite to keep the reader engaged throughout.
The
Accident is published by Macmillan. ISBN 9781770106277
- Margaret von Klemperer
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