(orion, $38.99)
Amy oacKinnon gave up her career as a congressional aide in the US to be an at-home mum but guessed she was losing the plot when she started imagining her own obituary and couldn’t think of much to say. Inspired by a radio interview with another author, the mother-of-three decided to give writing fiction a crack but the resulting novel, set in suburbia, was rejected by 73 agents and remains unpublished. That many rejections would put a dent in most aspiring novelists, but not Amy oacKinnon. Tethered, her next effort, the publishers could not snap up quickly enough and I understand why because to me it’s a real stand-out book.
Clara is a fragile woman with a tortured past who spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their bodies for the final farewell at the funeral parlour she has made her home. The kindness and grace she has rarely been shown herself she bestows on the lifeless; picking flowers from her own garden and making up bouquets to go to the grave with her carefully coiffed cadavers. Actually, Clara prefers to live among the dead, so when she finds a neglected little girl playing in the funeral parlour, she fights the urge to reach out to someone so alive but so obviously damaged, just as she is. Linus, the undertaker, who is a sort of father figure for Clara, encourages her to help the little girl but in doing so sparks a series of events that lead to heartbreak, horror, suspense and yet more death. Sometimes, though, in the awful business of unearthing the past, the future is allowed to take root.
Although it’s probably classed as a suspense novel, I found Tethered to be just as much a love story. There is mystery and intrigue, a few twists and bends, but there is also a weathered cop who’s every bit as much a lost soul as Clara. Amy oacKinnon tells a great story on her website (www.amymackinnon.com) about how she got the idea for the book. Turns out her uncle is an undertaker and for years she’d gone to his house for Christmas dinner without considering what went on in the floors beneath the dining room. one year though, he showed her around as he’d been renovating, and she was particularly struck by a portrait of Jesus he had in the room where he prepared the bodies. It reminded him that he was never alone, he told Amy. Lacking such faith herself, she eventually conjured up Clara: an undertaker who doesn’t believe in God, and so came Tethered.
If you’re looking for something that will stimulate your thinking, pluck your heartstrings, and keep you turning those pages, this is it.
