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Saturday, July 24, 2010
title: Wish Her Safe At Home
author: Stephen Benatar
published: 1982
genre: fiction/classic
pages: 263
rated: 4 out of 5
Wish Her Safe At Home was at times funny, sometimes odd, a bit sad and sometimes disturbing.
Rachel Waring is in her mid-forties, lives in London, has a job she dislikes and rents an apartment with her outspoken, chain-smoking roommate.
When Rachel's aunt passes away and leaves her a mansion in Bristol, everyone expects Rachel to sell the large house or to rent it out, instead she decides to move in. She leaves London behind, much to her roomates dismay and dislike.
As the story flows, Rachel has flashbacks about her past, mostly about her mother. You get to know that her childhood wasn't an easy one. Her mother was overbearing and cold. She hints that her father molested her.
Once she arrives in Bristol, you see how she interacts with people she meets and their reactions toward her, which are sometimes strange and a bit detached. Rachel is also a bit innapropriate at times when speaking to others. You kind of get the sense that she doesn't fit in, and is awkward in social situations. She tends to try too hard to be funny, or friendly when dealing with others. You also get the feeling that her perception of things isn't really on point. It's almost like she lives in her own little world.
As the book flows the reader gets to see what is going on in Rachel's mind and it is a read that is really hard to put down, especially towards the end. There are a few 'OMG!' moments. One thing that really creeped me out about this book is that since Rachel is narrating the story, the reader is seeing it through her point of view. The reader can only guess as to what is actually happening.
I did find the book hard to follow during some parts and found myself re-reading certain bits, mostly because Rachel would flashback, then flashforward to the present time and conversation. At other times I would re-read passages just to savor them.
I enjoyed Rachel's sarcasm. In this passage, Rachel's roomate asks her what's left for her to do now that she's leaving her job and moving to Bristol:
"Without your job what have you left? What shred of dignity?"
Without Mr.Danby, you mean, and the clocking-in each morning and the clocking-out each evening (they sort of almost trusted you at lunchtime) and the boring day-to-day routine and the banal repetitive conversations and the yawns and the silly jokes and the waiting about in wet weather for a bus that, even supposing it stopped, you knew you'd have to fight to get on? Not to speak of that Monday-morning feeling which inevitably marred much of Sunday afternoon? (With the exception-fairly unsurprisingly-of this one; it was hardly the shadow of tomorrow that was beclouding things at present.) And the alarm clock set for 6:30 on five days out of seven? Yes, indeed. Without all that, what had you left?
Rachel refers alot to books, films and music. Sometimes this was nice, sometimes it was creepy. I liked this one passage:
The topmost rooms had an air of Dickens. You almost expected to see Miss Havisham sitting solitary in the twilight, always the spinster in her wedding dress, swatched in cobwebs and depression.
It was like a museum with no curator to disturb the dust.
I recommend this book if you want to read something a little different. This is a story that begs to be discussed. It's the kind of book that haunts the reader long after the last page is turned.
Yes this was a happy day. Not one for letting in the glooms. I picked up my bill, totted up the figures.
And, after all, it was hardly as though I'd ever won a beauty contest, was it? Therefore no real reason to suppose that-if I hadn't been stuck at home-I'd had been whisked off by some gentleman like Mr.Darcy or Rhett Butler or Jervis Pendleton.
No real reason at all.
Special thanks to library thing for sending me a copy of Wish Her Safe At Home.
