Is there anything more delicious than an unreliable narrator? Reading an engrossing story and slowly realizing that the eyes through which you are seeing things might be a tad — skewed? Joanna Cannon's "A Tidy Ending" is told by Linda, a woman who has built a sturdy, ordinary life in an English town far away from her traumatic childhood in Wales. She has a husband named Terry, a factory worker who enjoys television and Friday nights in the pub; a part-time job at a charity shop; and a bossy, meddling mother who lives not far away. Other than Linda's compulsive desire to clean, all seems fairly normal.
And then young women begin disappearing, and Linda — who has long been known to the police as a busybody and a chronic reporter of perceived crimes — starts working on figuring it all out.
The many threads of this thoroughly engrossing story come together slowly: Linda's past; her obsession with her home's previous owner; Terry's increasingly mysterious comings and goings; and the — what? hospital? institution? loony bin? — where Linda writes much of her story.
Although the bodies continue to pile up, this is much more than a murder mystery; the mystery is almost secondary to the slow reveal of Linda's soul. "There are always two ways to interpret everything in life," she says early on in the novel. "All you need to do is pick the version that suits you better."
And that is exactly what Linda, the eternal optimist, does. This book didn't just stay with me. It stayed and stayed and stayed.
Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune's senior editor for books.
A Tidy Ending
By: Joanna Cannon.
Publisher: Scribner, 352 pages, $27.
