The Child: A Novel. Fiona Barton. Berkley. June 2017. 384 pp. ISBN#: 9781101990483.
Kate
Waters decides to diversify from her boring journalistic ventures into
something she can sink her teeth into.
During excavation of a building site, the skeleton of an infant of
indeterminate age is found. It’s a
backstory of no particular attention due to the fact that the newspapers are
paying more attention to the shenanigans around the upcoming Olympics in
London, England. For some unexplained reason, however, Kate sticks to the story
and begins to explore the neighborhood around where the child was found!
This
story is told from four different points of view: Kate’s version as already
described; a woman named Angela whose infant daughter was stolen from her
hospital room when she went into the bathroom to take a shower; a woman named
Emma whose dark secret has left her in a severe depression with anxiety that
she finds impossible to handle even with medication; and Emma’s mother Jude, a
self-centered woman whose lack of connection with her daughter leaves the
reader thinking and feeling there’s more than meets the eye here.
The
story moves rather slowly in the middle of the book but then accelerates to
roller coaster speed with a telephone call from Emma. Her revealed secret to Kate is so stunning to
Kate that she can barely handle it. From
there, the confusion rises as Angela’s obsession leads her to believe the dead
child is her own and not Emma’s. The
reader will be amazed at the way this mystery unfolds and Fiona Barton is
superb at plotting with sensitive time and interesting facts. This could be anyone’s story but the way the
lives of these three women interact is absolutely astonishing. Kate Waters has not only a journalistic eye
and ear but a sensitive soul that enables anyone she interviews to open up and
expose supposedly insignificant facts.
This
is fine, fine mystery or crime fiction reading and highly recommended to
readers of all ages!
