Linda Hammett has a very firm moral code when it comes to rules and regulations. She has somewhat of a reputation of being a busybody with the police, always reporting small transgressions she observes around her neighborhood. But she's used to people not noticing her. In fact, she often feels invisible. Although Linda is very tuned into OTHER people's conversations, she notices that people really don't pay her any attention. Even when people smile at her she discerns the lack of depth in that "they weren't smiles that held onto anything".
Linda yearns for female companionship but only seems to get it from her difficult mother. The two women share a painful secret of their past: Linda's father did something terrible when she was a child. It affected Linda's mother in that "the weight of it bowed her head and curved her shoulders". Although Linda and her mom believed him to be innocent, they fled from Wales to escape the notoriety and to start a new life. However, Linda thinks, "you can't take a scissors to one thing and leave the rest undamaged".
Now, murders of young women are stacking up in Linda's community, and people are nervous. Linda observes that people are constantly talking about it in the neighborhood because "you could see how it filled the gaps in their faces where empty spaces usually lived". Her oddball husband Terry is oblivious to her, and she seeks a friend with whom she can have closeness. However, Linda misses social cues and soon begins to obsess over and pursue Rebecca Finch, who once lived in the house Linda and Terry live in now.
Instead of worrying over what her husband is up to, Linda makes a plan to insinuate herself into Rebecca's life in the hopes that some of Rebecca's shininess will rub off on her. Because of this or maybe in spite of it, Linda thinks "if you tell yourself something long enough, before you realize, it becomes knitted into the very soul of who you are and it's a devil of a job to try and unpick it all".
Darkly funny and brimming with shrewd observations about human nature and the people hovering on the fringes of life, Joanna Cannon has created a marvelous read in A Tidy Ending. Cannon's characters are vividly drawn and won't soon leave this reader's mind! I wholeheartedly recommend this insightful and comically written thriller - this gets five stars out of five.
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