Review of Sophie Hannah's Hurting Distance
Chilling Thriller by the Author of Little Face
May 10, 2009
Naomi Jenkins is young, attractive and successful, running her own business making beautiful sun-dials. She is madly in love with her partner Robert, and he seems to feel the same about her.
Traumatic Past
Yet Naomi's life is not what it seems. Her lover is a married man, with whom she is allowed to spend precisely three hours a week - from four till seven every Thursday at a grotty service-station hotel. She also has a traumatic past, having been raped three years earlier in a quite horrific scenario - on a stage in a theatre, watched by a group of men eating dinner.
Naomi has done her best to forget this episode from her life, keeping it a secret from her friends and from Robert. When he disappears in mysterious circumstances, Naomi is forced to confess her past in increasing detail, particularly when it emerges that other women have been attacked in similar circumstances.
Naomi Jenkins and Charlie Zailer
The novel alternates between first person narration, as Naomi tells her side of the story, much of it addressed to Robert, and chapters written in the third person which focus largely on Charlie Zailer, the young female Detective Sergeant who is leading the investigation. This makes for an interesting mix of viewpoints, particularly as the paths of the two women become increasingly interlinked. Most of the other characters at first think that Naomi is delusional; the reader, having already seen some of the events through her eyes, knows that she is not.
Some aspects of the story are a little predictable, and the alert reader may well have worked out who the culprit is before the end of the novel, if not the full implications of the events that unfold. Similarly, some of the characters are rather one-dimensional, such as the sleazy chalet-owner Graham and his trashy wife Steph, and Proust, Charlie's cartoonishly idiotic boss.
This matters little, however, as the main characters are portrayed so convincingly: Juliet, the wronged wife whose feelings towards her husband's mistress are unusual to say the least; Naomi, the fragile victim who turns out to be stronger than she thinks; Charlie, who has a tendency to pick the most unsuitable men. The reader may work out "whodunnit", but will stay with this engrossing thriller to the end just to find out how relationships between these three compelling women are resolved.
Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah is published in the UK by Hodder (2007), ISBN 978-0-340-84034-4.
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