I’m glad I decided to re-read the novels I’ve acquired by Louise Candlish. Her writing is excellent, and while some of her more recent books are very tense, the older ones are a bit gentler. The plotting is still extremely well crafted, and the characters well-drawn, and once I get into any of her books they become quite difficult to put down.
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I’ve just finished reading ‘Other People’s Secrets’, which I previously read nearly nine years ago. I had totally forgotten the storyline, and all the people. And it’s an interesting cast. There are two main families, and the ones I liked the most were Adam and Ginny, a young couple who - as we learn very quickly - have recently had a terrible tragedy in their lives. They have come to stay in a boathouse by a beautiful Italian lake. Adam, who is a very caring person, hopes it might begin the healing process. Ginny doesn’t really want to be healed…
In strong contrast is the wealthy Sale family. They are staying at a large, somewhat pretentious villa on the same site as the boathouse. Marty, the father, is an outgoing, friendly guy who has made his money with a huge clothing brand. Unfortunately (and, again, we learn this very early in the book) he has been persistently unfaithful to his wife Bea. She’s put up with a great deal, perhaps because there’s a lot about Marty that’s very appealing - he is generous, welcoming, and a good father. But she’s come to the end of her tether and, when this family holiday is over, she plans to divorce him.
Marty and Bea have three adult offspring. Dom, the oldest, is irritable and grouchy throughout the book, and evidently has a secret which only his mother knows about. Second is Esther, who’s quite close to her mother but perhaps the least three-dimensional character. The youngest, just 18 and a recent school-leaver, is Pippi. Pippi is keen on fashion, she’s as outgoing as her father, and she’s also quite naive.
Given their proximity, it’s not long before Adam and Ginny meet the Sale family, and are gradually drawn into their circle. Bea and Ginny exchange a few secrets, but there are other secrets permeating the book, including one that’s mentioned in the prologue but which isn’t revealed until close to the end of the story.
There’s another important character in the book, a young man called Zach, who is staying in the nearby town. Pippi is attracted to him, and invites him to spend time with her family. He’s quite willing to do so even though nobody knows anything about him. And he’s not a very forthcoming person…
These eight people are the cast of the story, along with some minor characters who are fairly shadowy. I think I would have liked Esther, but we don’t really get to know her. I realise I liked Bea very much the first time I read the book; this time I found her a bit too accommodating, unwilling to form her own opinions. And she does something rather shocking - though perhaps I remembered it subconsciously from my first reading of the book - that meant I found her increasingly difficult to relate to.
It was Ginny, this time, whom I found the most sympathetic character. I’m thankful I haven’t suffered what she did, but I could still feel some empathy with her, in her grief, and the way she becomes irritable, or snappish at times, and at others feels unable to move even a limb. Her husband Adam is very likeable, even if he’s a bit abrupt with Zach whom he doesn’t much like. I could sympathise with Adam, too, trying to rationalise his feelings, talking about stages of grief, dealing with Ginny’s outbursts as if they were natural steps. The problem is that he keeps telling her what he thinks is going on, which obviously does not help at all.
It’s a cleverly written story, the secrets coming out at just the right time, keeping me turning pages long past the time I was intending to sleep, or get on with chores. I had not remembered any of the secrets that are revealed towards the end, although I had partly guessed at Zach’s (with some of the details wrong). My only gripe with the book, really, is the casual assumption that everyone - particularly teenagers and students - is regularly promiscuous as a matter of course. Perhaps it’s the case in some circles that I have never been part of, but the way everyone expected it left a bit of a sour taste.
There’s rather too much smoking, too; something I expect in older books but it seemed unnecessary in this one. And Bea’s casual attitude to one of the secrets, and to an important issue it brought up, felt jarring.
But other than those, which are minor details (and bugged me in part because the characters got under my skin, so I didn’t want them doing the things that felt out of character!) I thought the book was excellent. Very highly recommended to anyone who enjoys women’s fiction with a clever, unpredictable plot and a few significant issues.
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