The Watchful Wife by Suzanne Leal,
Allen & Unwin
This slow-burning drama starts with a punch – a knock on the door early in the morning, two police officers demanding to see the husband of our wide-eyed narrator Ellen. Gordon O’Hanlon is still in bed, Ellen says, but agrees to go and wake him. He’s already dressing and goes to the living room to face his accusers. Stuttering and shaking his head hard “like a dog with a toy in its mouth”, Gordon denies their claims. It’s clear they don’t believe him. And frankly at this moment neither do we, but Ellen is certain her husband is an innocent victim. Is this a wife’s blind partiality or is there something more going on?
Ellen’s an intriguing character, at once naive and self-possessed, and part of the compelling tension of this novel is how reliable she is as our storyteller.
We now dial back to Ellen’s extreme upbringing, the child of members of the Free Church, her father an elder in the religious community. It’s a world devoid of joy with a good deal of hellfire in its dogma including condemnation of “Papists”. Ellen strikes an awkward figure at school, cowering in drab long skirts, unable to participate in much that goes on. Her
