Reading room:
This brilliantly woven psychological thriller is one of the most talked about new books of the year and this month’s Great Read, writes Juliet Rieden.
this month’s Great Read and the latest books
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough, HarperCollins.
Edgy relationship thrillers are more than having a moment, they are now a thing with a name to boot – “domestic noir”. It all started with Gone Girl and The Girl On A Train and now the list is so long, publishers are going to have to subdivide the genre. The reason for the torrent is, no matter how dark, evil and twisted, these tales of love gone extremely wrong are flying off the bookshelves. Behind Her Eyes actually does create a new tributary, albeit based on some solid old-school thrill techniques, and you won’t be able to put it down, seriously, so buckle up!
David Martin is a poor farm boy turned psychiatrist at an expensive London private clinic. His wife, Adele, is a stunning heiress, her parents having died in a house fire. It was David who rescued 17-year-old Adele from the blaze and to onlookers they are the perfect couple. But at the opening of the book they are sleeping in separate bedrooms, despite an attempted “fresh start” and we are quickly aware that David has a temper and drinks a lot.
Enter Louise Barnsley, the third character in what we come to realise is a complex ménage. Single mum Louise is a rather lost good time girl who loves to drink and smoke, and is the secretary at the clinic, working there three days a week. At the start she reveals to her actress friend, Sophie, that the bloke she drunkenly kissed in a bar turned out to be her new boss David, who is married. Fortunately, both agree it was a one-time thing, but the situation gets messy when his wife Adele strikes up her own friendship with Louise.
Each chapter is written in the mind of either Adele or Louise and chillingly early on in the piece Adele reveals, “Now I have Louise. A new secret.” Adele is using Louise for her own bizarre ends. But what on earth are they? The surprises come thick and fast and with a sense of impending doom so acute you may forget to breathe. Honestly!
But the biggest shock of all is saved until last and it’s nothing you could ever have conceived. I found the end a little confusing and annoying at first, but it soon starts to play on your mind as you rethink the story chapter by chapter with this new key piece of information.
The thing is, you really do care for the characters and think you know them, their flaws, their insecurities, their passions, which is what makes the ending all the more spine-tingling. Sarah Pinborough says she loves a Hitchcock film, that “claustrophobic atmosphere”. And this is pure Hitchcock – with a dash of gothic fantasy thrown in. Have I said too much?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sarah Pinborough
British-born Sarah Pinborough was raised in India, Syria, Sudan, Moscow and South Africa and currently lives in Stony Stratford in England with her dog, Ted. She describes her childhood as “10 years of boarding school interspersed with wonderful travel, but tinged with rebelliousness and missing my family”. Her writing includes award-winning young adult horror novels, but Behind Her Eyes is an adult story. “I don’t treat writing for YA any differently than writing for adults in terms of complexity of story, but teenagers haven’t developed their grey areas, so they view everything more passionately,” she says. She is working on her next adult novel, “an equally twisted” thriller called Cross Her Heart.