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A Novel
by Amy Mackinnon
Book Reviewed by:Tethered is the first book in recent memory that I
absolutely could not read fast enough to see how it comes
out. The book is deceptive. Is it a mystery? Is it a
literary novel? At first it seems to be a rather
interesting, if uncomplicated, story about a young woman,
Clara Marsh, who works in a funeral home as an undertaker;
assistant to the funeral director, Linus Bartholomew. She's
had a rather difficult life – orphaned at an early age then
raised by an overly strict Bible-thumping grandmother – thus
she is pretty much a loner. So when she encounters a little
girl called Trecie in one of the mourning rooms I was
expecting a story about how Clara begins to relate to the
youngster and eventually overcomes her inability to connect
with others. Boy was I wrong.
The first thing that becomes abundantly clear is just how
damaged Clara is. She is so much more than simply a person
who keeps to herself. This is a woman who has perfected the
art of isolation to the extent that she is unable to even
bring herself to hug or return the affection of Linus and
his wife Alma who look upon her as their own daughter.
Indeed, far from identifying with Trecie, Clara has bonded
with a dead girl -- an unidentified child who was found
brutally murdered several years ago and whose grave she
visits regularly. She is unsympathetically untouched by the
mystery surrounding that child's death although it is the
primary focus of police detective Mike Sullivan and the rest
of the community. In so many ways she seems perfectly suited
to the downstairs/backroom nature of her profession. When
called upon to pick up a body Clara wants nothing to do with
the family, desiring only to dispatch the rather grim and
certainly gruesome clinical responsibilities of her job with
as little live human contact as possible.
On the other hand, in an apparent anomaly, in her spare time
Clara toils in the magnificent greenhouse that is attached
to her home. A place of indescribable beauty, it is a lush
refuge, a vibrant sanctuary where she cultivates row upon
row of thriving flowers. She knows each flower by name and
by its meaning – Shasta daisies/innocence,
chrysanthemums/cheerfulness, etc. – and thoughtfully selects
flowers appropriately suited to the deceased, then
discreetly tucks a bouquet in each casket. What's more, as
Trecie makes herself more of a presence in Clara's life –
both Clara and Trecie suffer from the same mental illness:
trichotillomania (an irresistible urge to pull out their
hair) -- she becomes torn between remaining aloof from
others and trying to intervene in this troubled child's
life. Does she remain tethered to and by her solitude or
does she allow herself to walk among and interact with
others? Truly, in Clara, MacKinnon has woven a character so
intricate and complex, yet the bits and pieces we glean
about her past offer a plausible foundation for her
"quirks."
However, I kept wondering throughout if Clara's assessment
of the world around her was to be trusted. Is she
sufficiently disconnected from the real world that it would
render her narration faulty? Or is she, like Humbert Humbert
in Nabokov's Lolita, an unreliable narrator putting
so much of her own self-serving slant on events that the
reader never really sees the facts? This, as much as
anything, held my interest because MacKinnon does a stand up
job of casting just enough doubt about Clara's mental
soundness via her interaction with the other characters that
it kept me guessing as to what was really going on. I still
can't say whether Tethered should be categorized as a
mystery or a literary novel but what I do know is that with
her stupendous prose and intricate characterizations
MacKinnon has penned a winner.
First Impressions: Nineteen BookBrowse members reviewed this book, rating it 4.5 on a 5 point scale - one of the top rated books reviewed to date. Read the reviews.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in August 2008, and has been updated for the
September 2009 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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