Victim’s brutal experience centre stage
Joy Fielding’s latest novel takes Paula Green by surprise.
Joy Fielding’s latest novel, Someone is Watching, caught me by surprise on a number of levels. The subject matter is tough but Fielding handles it with sensitivity.
Bailey Carpenter is an investigator for a law firm; she tracks cheating spouses and dodgy employees to provide evidence for courtroom cases. One day, when watching out for a man absconding from child alimony, Bailey is viciously attacked and raped.
Coming so soon after the death of her mother and then father, Bailey falls apart. She can’t leave her flat or answer her phone. She is plagued with bad dreams and the sensation someone is watching her. The first part of the book is like a black hole of grief, with Bailey losing the father she loved and bearing a violated body. It feels as though there is no way out. Bailey stays home and watches the world through her binoculars, just as she believes she is being watched. Family watch her for signs of improvement.
Bailey’s father left his substantial inheritance to Bailey and her wastrel brother but children from his other marriages are suing for a share (we are talking millions). Her half-sister turns up with her daughter, Jade, to nurse Bailey back to health.
Jade is like rescue remedy; a feisty girl with no filters and boundless curiosity. Jade gets Bailey watching low-grade reality shows because it is where she takes her madcap world wisdom from.
Jade and Bailey start watching a narcissistic man in the apartment opposite. He becomes a prime suspect in Bailey’s rape, along with several other candidates. As a reader you enter
The novel offers a knotty tangle of suspects and clues ...
a whirlpool of suspicion and theories, with the police sceptical but following up every suggestion in order to find the rapist.
The novel offers a knotty tangle of suspects and clues but it also puts the brutal experience of the victim centre stage. Solving the crime is crucial, even though the police occupy the outskirts of the story.
For Bailey it is also finding ways to be in the world again, to make human connections and to trust. The solutions for both crime and restoration of self are surprising.