Book review: It’s been more than 50 years since psychologists like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Robert Kavanaugh identified various “stages of grief” in response to traumatic events like the death of loved ones. Shock and denial, anger, guilt, bargaining, depression, acceptance. As Hawke’s Bay author Charity Norman shows in Home Truths, perhaps in the social media age we need to add “vulnerability to conspiracy theories and online grifters”.
It was meant to be a joyous day for the Denby family, as they celebrated daughter Heidi’s 13th birthday in August 2019. The newly minted teenager had simple wishes: a bike ride with her father Scott across the Yorkshire countryside, lunch at a tavern, then head home.
Mother Livia, a probation officer, would hold the fort at home with Heidi’s severely asthmatic 6-year-old brother Noah, before further family celebrations. Instead, tragedy.
A phone is left behind and several calls are missed. Scott’s brother Nicky, a type 1 diabetic with an intellectual disability, dies on Heidi’s birthday. The whole Denby family are left shell-shocked, but amiable teacher Scott takes it particularly hard, racked with guilt for not answering Nicky’s desperate attempts to reach him. Searching for answers, comfort or meaning, or anything within the hellscape of grief, Scott starts connecting with various internet communities.
Meanwhile, Livia struggles to keep the family afloat, as Heidi withdraws, Noah suffers through health challenges and Scott’s behaviour becomes increasingly fraught as he immerses himself in conspiracy theories, threatening his career, his marriage and his family. What would you do if the person you loved became barely recognisable?
While the novel opens in a Yorkshire courtroom in 2022, it’s not a courtroom thriller as such (Norman was a barrister in the UK); instead, it’s more of a family drama and domestic thriller. Ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances that put everything they care for at deadly risk.
Norman takes us inside the perspectives of Livia, Scott and teenager Heidi, weaving together a terrifying tale of just how easy it can be for people to be pulled apart by grief. Scott’s descent down the rabbit hole of fake news, “truthers” and internet conspiracies is harrowing.
“Online recruiters use many of the same techniques we see in quasi-religious sects or cults,” one character notes. “They know exactly what they’re doing. They offer community and belonging to individuals who feel disconnected. Relevance to those who feel irrelevant. Purpose and meaning to those whose lives seem pointless.”
A superb character-centric novel that explores a scary and all-too-believable premise.
Home Truths by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) is out now.
