The searcher
Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Shutter Island” and “Gone, Baby, Gone”) has a magnificent way of tunneling into his characters’ psyches to reveal their wounds, and no matter how raw or brutal, his characters’ pain always seems to achieve a kind of symphonic grace. In his latest novel, “Since We Fell,” he’s equally astute, but here he’s doing something a little different structurally. And though it doesn’t always work, it’s still so true and shocking — and fun — that you know you’re going to follow him wherever he leads you.
The first part of the book explores the life of Rachel Childs, taking its time and slowly unraveling her layers and defenses. Abandoned by her dad when she was 5, she grows up desperate to know why he left, and who he is, and how she can find him, sure he’s the missing piece that will make her complete. But her mom is manipulative, a woman famous for her books on how to stay married, even though she herself failed. “A man is the stories he tells about himself,” Rachel’s mom says, “and most of those stories are lies.” Rachel sets out on a search to find her dad, making us think, of course, that this is the narrative drive for the novel, that it’s going to be a deep psychological study that takes its time investigating Rachel’s crippling longing to fit in, to belong, to not be abandoned.
But not so fast. Halfway through the novel, Rachel’s desperate search for her father shifts gears, and suddenly the whole tone and tension of the book goes into delicious overdrive.
Now a television journalist in Boston (Lehane’s love for his hometown is, as always, wonderfully palpable), and married to a producer, Sebastian, a man she doesn’t really love, Rachel dreams of moving to New York City and hitting the big time. But when she travels to Haiti to report on the tragedy of the disappeared in that country, Rachel returns to the station and has an on-the-air breakdown. She’s, of course, immediately fired and soon becomes a pariah, or so she thinks. Sebastian begins to blame her for her failed career — and his — and the marriage dissolves like soap bubbles. But then Rachel again runs into Brian, a private investigator who keeps slipping in and out of her life, and she’s drawn to how optimistic he is, how loving. She’s sure that this is a man who will never leave her, who will help her navigate a world that seems terrifying to her, and so they marry, and finally, she feels safe. But is she?
This is where everything shifts into an expertly navigated warp drive of twists and turns that come so fast and unexpectedly that readers might rip the pages in the hurry to see just what shocker might be coming next. Nothing for Rachel is what it appears, and that now includes her beloved. Is there a conspiracy around her? Is Brian a part of it? Does he really love her, or is that part of his lie as well?
Despite the two-books-inone feeling, this is a really smart novel about who we are, and who we choose to be, and how, if ever, we can know the difference. Rachel might be in the middle of a dangerous spider web, but that is actually what begins to give her strength to push her into actions and decisions she might never have imagined, and there’s something triumphant about that. “Since We Fell” might not be Lehane’s absolute best book, but not-the-best Lehane is still worlds better than most anything else around.