Written by Tom Carrao
Poor Emily is having a very bad time—Girl on the Train bad—in this debut thriller from author Claire Allan, which brings her to her ninth published novel.
Still struggling for coherence in the wake of a devastating relationship, replete with abuse both physical and psychological, an act of casual kindness on Emily’s part leads to the death of a young mother just steps from her, which triggers severe traumatic reverberations in her psyche. Still engaged in the process of putting herself back together, this experience steadily erodes any progress made. Emily descends into a miasma of paranoia and self-loathing, a mess of destructive, deceptive, damaging impulses.
Worse yet, she conjectures that she may indeed have been the intended target of the fatal hit-and-run just outside the doorway of the shopping centre—immediate in her mind is the vague threat or promise which was the departing word of her former partner. Shattered and fractured with her self-identity unstable, a guilt-ridden Emily begins an investigation into the background of a woman she comes to know as Rose and uncovers (as the “glow and sparkle” of her online life would have one believe) a charmed existence with her successful author husband Cian, young child Jack, and perfectly appointed home.
For a broken individual like Emily, who had long ago “dismantled her own life” and not quite found the way back (plugging any sharp or dulled angles with the comforts of drink and prescription pills), Rose looms as a beguiling, seductive figure of envy and wish fulfilment. Without quite deliberating, an irrational Emily finds herself on a course to embroil herself in Rose’s former life—first becoming her replacement at former employer Scott’s Dental and interacting with her colleagues.
Then eventually she meets Cian himself, gently inveigling her way into the core of Rose’s existence, sidling in as his friend and confidante, the relationship quickly warping into a carnally fraught coupling. Curiously, whether or not it is intended, sexuality is viewed through a prism of arrested adolescence—there is quite a lot of knee-weakening and fluttering to the pit of the stomach, which is a sort of indulgent pubescent lust, which may be a reflection of dysfunction in development. It’s clear that Emily’s decision making skills are stunningly impaired with her spectacularly awkward appearances at a set of funerals also speaks to this fact.
With her short, punchy prose and breathless pace—the opening chapter especially benefits from this style in communicating the immediate shock, terror, and chaotic aftermath of the accident—Allan successfully mines the form of the suspense novel, and the clever slow drip of information in regards to character and behaviour creates a continual inventory of twists and turns that keeps the pages turning.
Vulnerabilities and secret fears drive many cast members into surprising and startling actions. Nearly everyone has a personal revelation. The style also nicely complements the disordered mind of the central character. She additionally offers up an astutely serious, sober study of the mentality that undergirds victims of abuse, its consequent compromises to personal worth and value and the terrible ways in which it fixedly grounds down a sense of self. So much of what drives Emily’s discord is her own history and experience of debasement, and her complicity in the perceptions that those closest to her now hold (she keenly feels the loss of support of her family). Her only ally, Maud, has relocated to New York. Her particular heartbreak is in the fact that her sacrifice never changed Ben, her erstwhile boyfriend, into the man she thought him capable of being.
Intervening chapters, headed by chirpy Facebook postings by Rose charting the wondrous stages of her courtship with Cian, are belied with increasingly anxious, dispiriting text from a secret diary ripe with growing alarm and despair at darkening moods of controlling anger, which point to the fact that Emily and Rose may share much in common. Emily’s toxic involvement with Cian addresses recurring patterns of behaviour, and his possible professional exploitation of that behaviour.
Admirably, Allan is unflinching in following her protagonist into some truly dark, gnarled psychosexual territory, at best reminiscent of Rear Window Hitchcock (identity transference, wilful domination, deliberate masochism). Emily is not always likeable or sympathetic, and is dubiously reliable, but she possesses a heedlessness that compels. Momentum drags a bit in the middle section, and the climax feels markedly rushed, but is preceded by an effectively menacing scene in which Emily queasily receives and dispatches an evening visitor that qualifies as the true emotional crux of the novel.
Quite beyond its thriller trappings, this works just as well as a fine character study of a woman on the verge who must find a strength and faith in herself to break free of her own worst instincts, rescuing herself from her past. She, as any great hero on a quest, must first face many a trial on the way to salvation and release.
Her Name Was Rose is now available from Amazon, Book Depository, and at other good book retailers depending on your location. Thank you to Avon Books for providing The Nerd Daily with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Her Name Was Rose? Or will you be checking it out? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Her name was Rose. You watched her die. And her death has created a vacancy.
When Emily lets a stranger step out in front of her, she never imagines that split second will change her life. But after Emily watches a car plough into the young mother – killing her instantly – she finds herself unable to move on.
And then she makes a decision she can never take back.
Because Rose had everything Emily had ever dreamed of. A beautiful, loving family, a great job and a stunning home. And now Rose’s husband misses his wife, and their son needs a mother. Why couldn’t Emily fill that space?
But as Emily is about to discover, no one’s life is perfect … and not everything is as it seems.
