A Child's Book of True Crime
Chloe Hooper Jonathan Cape, 238pp, £12.99
ISBN 0224062379
Chloe Hooper's assured and intricate first novel follows the journey into adulthood of Kate Byrne, a young primary school teacher involved with an older married man, the father of her brightest pupil, Lucien Marne. The boy's mother, Veronica, has written a bestseller about a celebrated Tasmanian murder case, that of another young woman, Ellie Siddell, who was probably killed by the wife of a vet with whom she had been having an affair. The wife mysteriously vanished after the murder, leaving the vet to bring up his small children alone.
The Siddell case obsesses Kate, and she soon starts to see herself as a modern-day Ellie. When she begins to get silent phone calls and her car brakes fail, she imagines that a jealous Veronica is stalking, even trying to kill her. But if she cracks the case, she reasons, she can escape danger. So, like Veronica, she starts writing a book about the Siddell murder, but hers is ostensibly for children.
In this part of small-town Australia, the women can sniff out adultery across a school cricket field. Kate is considered a slag by the locals, but sees herself as "upper middle class", "trysting" with Lucien's father, yet sure she knows best about her pupil's emotional well-being. The trouble is that Kate herself is still a precocious child at heart, unable to understand adult pain and deceit.
Nothing is how she imagined. In the end, it is Kate who is creeping up to the Marnes' house, knife in handbag, all but destroyed by the knowledge that, unlike Ellie, she was no part of a love triangle, but has been cynically used by both husband and wife. Hooper encapsulates exactly what it means to leave childhood behind and learn about the painful realities of adult life. Ironically, the only unconvincing character is young Lucien. How can you believe in a nine-year-old who pronounces: "Truth is a flexible substance"?
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