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THE INVISIBLE ONES (AUDIO)
by Stef Penney, read by Dan Stevens
Penguin Audio, January 2012
Unabridged pages
$27.97
ISBN: B006YQPGC6


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Many of the best British and Irish authors use mysteries as frameworks for larger issues. One merely has to think of writers like P.D. James, Benjamin Black, Tana French, and Kate Atkinson (to name but a few) to know that more than a crime lurks behind the narrative. It is not lightly that I add Stef Penney to a list of such stellar names, but her new novel shows every indication that she has the talent to join them.

Her first work, THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES, won the Costa (formerly the Whitbread) Award and was long-listed for the Orange Prize. THE INVISIBLE ONES has none of the dreaded second-novel letdown. Ray Lovell is a private investigator who specializes in divorces. Nevertheless, Leon Wood, a Roma, wants Ray to locate his daughter Rose, who has been missing for over six years. Suddenly, Leon has a hunch that something bad has happened to her. It seems a bit late for him to care; after all, he hadn't looked for her when she ran away from her husband, Ivo, and the rest of his family shortly after the wedding. Leon won't take no for an answer because Ray is the only fellow traveller in the trade. Even though Ray is only half-Gypsy, who else will Wood's in-laws, the Jankos, speak to?

Ray doesn't like missing person cases because a previous one turned messy on him. He's also none-too-comfortable with a Romany label. His Gypsy father left the traveling life to attend school, marry an English woman, work as a letter carrier, and live in a home—all of which are anathema to the Roma. Ray has learned some Gypsy lore but has lived a typical English life.

He also knows that the Janko family won't be easy to locate. They live in campers, move about, usually don't have telephones (this is the 80s), and are wary of outsiders. But finally, his curiosity and wads of ten-pound notes outweigh his reluctance, and he sets off to find whatever members of the Janko clan he can uncover in the hopes they can point him to Ivo.

JJ, the only teen among the Jankos, is the second narrator in this novel. Like Ray, JJ is half-Roma, and his mother was cast out from the Jankos for having an affair with a gorjio—an unclean outsider. They have been accepted back into the small and generally elderly Janko family, in part to help Ivo care for his disabled six-year-old son, Christo. The child has inherited the fatal "bad blood" common among the males of the family, who tend to marry their cousins. As in many novels, Christo's disability is romanticized. Unable to speak or walk and half the normal size for his age, Christo is totally cheerful and angelic and is carried about by his kin like a pillow pet. Both Ivo's father and great uncle are in wheelchairs from various accidents, which makes life in an encampment difficult for all, but they prefer their circumstances to life in a council flat.

But JJ provides a generally upbeat and effervescent inside view of the Jankos' world and how they regard the English around them. They can't imagine living in fixed buildings with no air or stars and dirty, forbidden things like toilets inside a house. Their strict rules of cleanliness and order are daily affronted by British assumptions of what they should do and how they should live.

When Ray finally locates the Janko encampment, he and JJ hit it off. JJ is a perfect foil, both as a younger version of Ray and as someone who was a small child when Rose ran off: Of all the Jankos, he knows nothing about what happened to her.

Ray becomes enmeshed in the Janko family far beyond his relationship with JJ and even the case itself, which is solved about two-thirds through the novel. Ray finds himself unable to let go of the Jankos and particularly of Lulu, Ivo's youngest aunt. Because she lives and works in London, Ray turns to her as an intermediary when he has questions. Lulu has given up the traveller life. She wants more for herself—a home, a steady job, and maybe a family. As a result, she has a tenuous relationship with the Jankos, for whom she is "mokady" (dirty).

JJ, in contrast, is just beginning to break Gypsy codes by dating Anglo girls in his local high school. With no other Roma families about, he hardly has a choice. He finds himself treading softly between two cultures, each of which disapproves of the other. The one time he brings home a classmate, he sees his surroundings for the first time through the disapproving eyes of gorjios. When he visits her house, he, in turn, is shocked by their relative wealth and how carelessly they consume it.

In the end, both JJ and Ray are on a quest for identity and self-acceptance. As members of two cultures that live side-by-side but which usually ignore or despise one another, they must find a way to love themselves and to choose a side. It isn't easy, but Penney writes with engaging historical detail, skill, and insight about one of England's small and almost forgotten communities.

Dan Stevens, a seasoned entertainer, gives the work the performance it deserves. Best-known for his current role as Matthew Crawley in the Downton Abbey series, he has created two narrative voices and paces for Ray and JJ. Ray sounds educated, thoughtful, and middle class whereas JJ speaks quickly in excited, working-class, adolescent slang. He also individuates the Jankos well, from Lulu's clipped responses to the gravely voices of the older Janko men, who live beyond television and radio warnings about the evils or alcohol and tobacco.

This is a difficult audio to put down and will send listeners racing out for Penney's first work if they haven't already heard it. A new talent is firmly in place.

§ Karla Jay is a legally blind audio book addict, who lives in New York City, where she is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Pace University.

Reviewed by Karla Jay, January 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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