When 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm descends. Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm is Bella’s beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose apparently easygoing nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street-smarts that only experience can bring.
An Isolated Incident
By emilymaguire
The novel opens in a small Australian country town with a young policeman informing Chris Rogers that her younger sister, Bella Michaels may have been found after having been reported missing. He asks Chris to identify the brutally slain body which turns out to be Bella.
Unlike so many crime novels, this is told mostly from the point of view of Chris and we feel every bit of her anguish.
‘The loss of her is already too much and then there’s the other thing – the end of being loved in the way only my sister could love me. What I feel for her survives and that hurts like battery acid every minute, but worse is that what she felt for me died with her. I will never be loved like that again. ‘
Twelve years older than Bella, our hearts break as the relationship and the intense love between Chris and her only sister is revealed. We’re introduced to Nate, Chris’s truckie ex-husband and their complicated relationship.
The crime and the police investigation is secondary to how the people who are left behind deal with the trauma of loss. The writing is superbly raw and honest and delves into themes of an ever-present feeling of violence, vulnerability and fear felt by many women particularly heightened in the aftermath of a vicious crime. About men’s violence on women, the following paragraph is the most poignant of all.
‘And there are men who don’t cause quite so much damage and so are all too happy to publicise the worst so they can look mild in comparison, and men who do no violence and so don’t see how it is their problem that others do, and here are men who want us to know about the bad and the worse and the negligent so that we go to them for protection and there are men … who are pure and good of heart and intent and who want only to be our friends and brothers and lovers but we have no way of telling those from the others until it’s too late and that, perhaps is the most unbearable thing of all.’
On the other side, is the media’s portrayal of a slain girl who is interesting only because she is young and pretty and the relentless pursuit for an angle at all costs. And this is where we’re put into journalist, May Norman’s point of view. We read her posts just as we would the newspaper. She too must deal with the aftermath of the murder and her job of reporting, while escaping from her own loss of love. If there is any weakness at all in this novel, it would be this character whom I found difficult to warm to.
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and Stella prize in 2017, this is an important novel to read, well executed and exquisitely written.
Long winded, could use condensing.
Bella Michaels was last seen leaving from her job on a Friday evening. Her friends and family are concerned when they can’t get in touch with her over the weekend. They contact the police, but since she is twenty-five years old, they assume she’s taken off for the weekend with friends. Her family and close friends think; differently, her sister Chris refers to her as the “the world’s youngest grandma” she’s very responsible and would never do anything to worry her family.
Her brutalized body is discovered the following Monday on the side of the road leading out of town. Strathdee is a small town in Australia, that’s pretty safe, so this murder rocks the community. Everyone seems to know everyone, and they all loved Bella, she was a special young lady that was beautiful, yet extremely kind.
Her older sister, Chris is utterly unhinged after she has to make the identification of the body and speak with police. Chris is several years older than Bella and works in a local pub, and after her divorce, it’s common knowledge that she’s taken up with several truckers who have stopped off at the pub while driving through town for a night of fun after work.
Chris is an attractive woman for her age, but she’s all heart. Her ex-husband Mack comes down to help her deal with the death of her sister, Bella. The last thing Chris wants is to deal with all the media; not to mention some of the detectives’ innuendo of her free spirit lifestyle compared to Bella’s they are as different as night and day.
This case is going nowhere; the media has lost interest and left, Chris is trying to deal with this as best she can. At first, she goes back to work until she starts suspecting everyone around her as the monster who killed her sister. Chris finds herself immobilized by this fear that eventually takes over her life.
This is an excellent psychological thriller, Ms. Maguire pulls you in from the beginning and holds your attention to the very end. At times it’s like the protagonist, Chris is speaking to you the reader directly which made it even more interesting. The way she weaves Chris’s grief and torment it keeps the reader wondering what is fact and fiction. It really does begin to play on your mind.
Disclosure: I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this e-galley in exchange for my honest opinion, the opinions I expressed above are my own