This thought-provoking novel is a brilliant debut.
“Elsewhere, people were squeezing the last six months into small spaces: bicycles onto the backs of campervans, mattresses onto the roofs of cars, sleeping bags into recycled supermarket carriers, saucepans stacked one into another like Russian dolls, inflatable water carriers deflated. Set to music it would have been a grand chorus scene in an opera, with all the crowd and the minor parts working in unison and it seemed as though any minute they would all turn to face front and burst into song for their curtain call.”
The Well is the first novel by British short story writer and poet, Catherine Chanter. Ruth Ardingly is returned, under house arrest, to The Well, the lush rural property she and her husband, Mark have owned for over a year. The property is securely fenced, Ruth wears an ankle bracelet monitor and is guarded by three soldiers enforcing the Drought Emergency Regulations Act. How has their escape from the City (and the cloud of suspicion that hung over Mark) in the guise of a tree change, gone so horribly wrong?
As Ruth endures the boredom of her sentence, she thinks back on how it all started: the purchase, the rain that favours their idyll, the satisfaction of working towards self-sufficiency and the delight in presence of their grandson, Lucien. Ruth shares some of the memories with a young guard and with the priest who visits her. She tells of the jealousy and suspicion of neighbours, and the arrival of the Sisters of the Rose of Jericho with their charismatic leader, Sister Amelia.
Against the background of a severely water-restricted England, Chanter examines how relationships can break down under the effect of suspicion and increasingly differing priorities, the influence of religious cults and the tragic consequences that can ensue. She gives the reader a glimpse of online religion and the mass hysteria it can generate. This is a gripping drama that will have the reader wondering about the true fate of the young victim, and Ruth’s part in it, until the final pages.
Chanter’s characters are both credible and complex. Her descriptive prose is wonderfully evocative: “.. the thought of her is dries my mouth with hope and fear and thoughts, wild and screeching as crows at dusk, scattering into the darkness” and “Some, I guess, came simply to dip their toe in the rippling pond of drama in the otherwise flat surface of their lives” are just two examples. This thought-provoking novel is a brilliant debut.
Marianne, 11/03/2015
