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INTO THE DARKEST CORNER
by Elizabeth Haynes
Harper, June 2012
403 pages
$25.99
ISBN: 0062197258


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The novel opens in 2005, in Lancaster Crown Court, the case R v Brightman. According to the defendant in the case, Lee Brightman, Catherine Bailey was convinced Lee was having an affair with another woman, a conviction which caused Catherine to become aggressive toward him. Catherine, on the other hand, is terrified of Lee.

In one of the many time switches in which the narrative unfolds, we go back four years, to 2001 and Naomi Bennett's dying moments which are witnessed by the man who caused her death, the man who is convinced that he is the only person who has ever loved her.

The narrative changes to the first person, the story being told by Catherine Bailey, the time frame switching between 2007 and 2003. That can be a bit disorientating at times if the reader is not careful to check the date at the beginning of each section. In 2003, Cathy meets Lee Brightman, who is working as a doorman of a club. He is very good-looking and she is attracted to him.

In passages set in 2007, we learn that Cathy has contracted Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, having to check and recheck the security in her flat in order to have peace of mind. The cause harks back to what began happening to her in 2003. She was deeply attracted to Lee and sufficiently unwise to begin going out with him. He becomes exceptionally possessive, virtually dictating her every action and thought. Not only that, Lee becomes violent, cutting her and leaving wounds that he claims to her friends are a result of self harm.

Catherine eventually escapes Lee, who goes to gaol for the injuries he has inflicted on her. She leaves her old home and goes to London, where she starts a new life, although she is now bedeviled by the OCD. A psychiatrist is one of the tenants in the house where Catherine has taken an apartment. Stuart Richardson has just moved in and begins to take an interest in Catherine whom he gets to know after she has to borrow some teabags from him. He manages to persuade her to seek help from a colleague.

Gaol sentences eventually end and prisoners are released. Unfortunately, Lee views Catherine as his property and she is not difficult to locate, for all that she thinks that she has escaped in London.

This is an exceedingly well written book. At first I found the jumping between the time frames annoying but the annoyance soon passed as it became clear what the author was doing. The character of Lee is terrifyingly plausible. The nature of OCD is explained well with a minimum of didacticism. The reader is made to care about Catherine's fate and hope she doesn't end up the same way as Naomi Bennett with whom the book began.

§ Denise Pickles has been reviewing for RTE for many years. She lives in Australia.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, February 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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