The Hiding Places

Catherine Robertson

Black Swan/Penguin Random House

Otago Daily Times, May 30th 2015

Although not a ‘chick-lit’ fan I rather enjoyed Catherine Robertson’s first three novels, a loose trilogy whose earthy, good-natured humour and genre-subvertiveness I found curiously appealing but which presented something of a classification challenge for publishers in today’s niche-focussed market. Robertson’s latest novel, The Hiding Places, is pitched to a different end of the commercial spectrum and is altogether darker and more serious, her characters dealing not with the everyday dramas of domestic life but with issues of grief, guilt and reconciliation.

Five years after the death of her young son Ben, an accident for which she holds herself entirely responsible, April Turner is living out a self-imposed purgatory within which she has stripped herself of anything and anyone that could possibly give her solace. So when she discovers she is the sole heir to a run-down British manor, Empyrean, her first instinct is rid herself of it as rapidly and impersonally as possible. However she is unable to stop constructing stories about the house and its inhabitants, especially after she is sent a map of its grounds drawn by its previous owner, James Potts, and she decides to travel to Buckinghamshire to see it for herself.

Rather than laying her imagination to rest the experience leaves increasingly fascinated by Empyrean’s history, particularly after she meets Sunny, Lady Day, an elderly widow who grew up with James and whose stories of the house and family bridge the gap between past and present. Nor is she able to insulate herself from the circle of friendship offered by Sunny and a small group of other people associated with the property; Edward Gill the laconic gay solicitor who manages the estate, the dissolute but puppyish loveable Oran who has been hired to restore Empyrean to a saleable condition, and Jack, a charismatic enigmatic of a man who lives within (or possibly embodies) the woods that surround the house.  

The story alternates between present and past, with April’s increasingly difficult battle to exclude pleasure and hope from her life, balanced by – and echoed in –the tragic events that led to James Potts’ suicide and Empyrean’s abandonment.

Although I was often frustrated with April’s refusal to accept she was not to blame for Ben’s death (in large part because I would probably react in a very similar way myself), the historical sections held my interest. And while there is an inevitable predictability to the plot that is dictated by commercial imperative, Robertson also draws on older mythological traditions – Herne, Arthur, Blodeuwedd – to inform the narrative, and her characters retain the idiosyncratic charm that has become something of a literary signature. If you enjoyed her previous novels, The Hiding Places is well worth a try.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/much-darker-more-serious-work-first-three-novels