Written by Tom Carrao
Aspiring novelist Jane Campbell, smarting from her latest rejection, is about to find events in her own life taking on the attributes and plot points from any number of suspense thrillers in Paula Daly’s pacy latest novel. In the worst way possible, the situation in which she finds herself mimics the raw, sheer, dread material of her crime writer husband’s narratives.
Long before the awful occasion that jumpstarts the action, Daly is already masterfully mining the everyday fractious pressures and tensions within the Campbell’s domestic realm: troubled encounters with neighbours, perceived spousal slights and disregard, battles of ego and will, strained responsibilities of child-rearing, overbearing and judgemental relatives. It’s a panoply of minor irritations. Observations are razor-sharp and pointedly pungent, illustrating a marriage and partnership that feels lived-in and natural, subject to the very real micro aggressions that arise from any bodies sharing enclosed, tight spaces. Before any crime is enacted, conditions are already enflamed.
Preparing to travel to a birthday celebration, the children already buckled in the back seat of the car, belligerent neighbour Lawrence chooses a most inappropriate time to accost the Campbells regarding their cat’s antisocial behaviour. Excusing herself to return to the home to fetch some beers for her increasingly querulous husband (but really seeking to avoid at all costs the confrontation which she so keenly abhors), Jane allows herself just enough distraction once back inside to successfully sidestep Lawrence’s presence. Upon returning to the car, Jane discovers Leon strangely unresponsive, and it is soon clear that something terrible has occurred in her absence, the particulars of which will not be divulged here. Needless to say, what has befallen Leon is a horrific game changer, injuriously nasty, and Daly describes the immediate aftermath in shocking, gut-wrenching emotional and forensic detail.
In her quest to uncover the reasons behind the vicious attack on her husband, Jane must find a brashness and boldness not native to her. She must come out from behind herself and fight against belittling forces. Hard lead investigator Ledecky, initially sympathetic to her predicament, grows increasingly suspicious and antagonistic, especially as evidence accrues; Gloria, Leon’s mother and Juliana, his sister, continually undermine Jane’s authority; Leon’s condition demands a commitment and focus heretofore unparalleled. Most disconcerting of all is a revelation of financial mismanagement on Leon’s part, along with the discovery of an archive of worrisome video surveillance, and a possible online campaign of character assassination of a fellow author, revealing a personality unknown to Jane, a trove of destabilising secrets. Compounding this dismay is the humiliation of having to inform friends of the extent of the deceit.
The most harrowing chapters of this work address not the crime, but the challenges and adversities facing the carers of victims of brain damage. In this respect, Jane and Leon’s family must struggle to accommodate a loved one no longer recognisable, given to hostile outbursts, inappropriate sexual behaviour, incommunicative, lapsed. Upon waking from an induced coma, Leon asks not for Jane, who is a stranger to him, but his ex-wife, the first awful indication of a new normal. Jane crests along an exhausting wave of love, fear, confusion, anguish, and hate. Daly acutely depicts the constant, sustained state of panic that is induced. Gloria, so steadfast in faith, loses centre. Juliana twists in knots, careening for elusive answers. And in the faded background is a very lost and frightened Leon.
Folded within the narrative is a study of the often contrary aspects of being an author, requiring an odd commingling of fragility and toughness, compassion, and ruthlessness, living both inwardly and outwardly. Daly addresses some truly ghastly conduct between writers, crusades of vicious manoeuvrings and machinations-stolen manuscripts, threats to livelihood, online trolling, even murderous inclinations. Writing is not such a sedate pursuit in Daly’s world, nor is it very often lucrative. The reveal of the culprit, although clever and very much resonant with its themes, is perhaps the one instance of immoderation, the confession extravagantly convoluted. Yet it fulfils the requirements of a thriller, it’s only because the rest of the novel is such an elevated example of what can be achieved within the parameters of genre fiction that the revelation suffers.
The book briskly moves past the mystery’s solution to conclude with Jane’s journey to London to meet with a publishing agent. With a manuscript in hand, this confirms Daly’s foremost concern to be her heroine’s story, her progression towards finding an emerging voice. Daly teases mercilessly in this section with what information is revealed and withheld, delivering answers skilfully, in the process upending the reader’s expectations. She saves, for the very last sentence, a startling and deeply satisfying meta twist that provides a personal and empowered final sting.
Open Your Eyes is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From acclaimed novelist and “master of psychological thrillers” (Library Journal) Paula Daly, Open Your Eyes follows a bestselling crime novelist’s tragic turn from fictional perpetrator into real-life victim.
Jane Campbell avoids confrontation at any costs. Given the choice, she’ll always let her husband, Leon–a bestselling crime writer–take the lead, while she focuses on her two precious young children and her job as a creative writing teacher. After she receives another rejection for her novel, Leon urges Jane to put her hobby to rest. And why shouldn’t she, when through Jane’s rose-tinted glasses, they appear to have the perfect house and the perfect life?
But then Leon is brutally attacked in their driveway while their children wait quietly in the car, and suddenly, their perfect life becomes the stuff of nightmares. Who would commit such a hateful offense in broad daylight? With her husband in a coma, Jane must open her eyes to the problems in her life, as well as the secrets that have been kept from her. Although she might not like what she sees, if she’s committed to discovering who hurt her husband–and why–Jane must take matters into her own hands.
A surprising and gripping thriller of pride, ambition, and envy, Open Your Eyes is an unsettling whodunit about the illusions of a perfect marriage that confirms Paula Daly as a writer at the forefront of domestic suspense.
