Under the Harrow
Ratings10
Average rating3.3
'It's like Broadchurch written by Elena Ferrante. I've been telling all my friends to read it - the highest compliment' Claire Messud When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder. Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers. A riveting psychological thriller and a haunting exploration of the fierce love between two sisters, the distortions of grief, and the terrifying power of the past, Under the Harrow marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
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Edgar Award 2017 for Best 1st Novel - Takes place on a College campus, Good characters and twists & turns! I enjoyed it!
Why I would pick up a book that claims to be the next “Gone Girl,” which I read, but thought was just okay, is beyond me. Mind you, I didn't specifically choose “Under the Harrow” for that reason; it seemed like a nice break from some slightly heavier stuff I brought home from the library. It was only after I got the book home that I noticed the comparison.
Indeed, it is lighter, not only in heft, but also in content. There is nothing inherently good or bad about the length of a book as a sole characteristic, but I applaud the short length in this case because I wasn't stuck with Nora for more than a few hundred pages.
We are supposed to think we have an unreliable narrator. What we have instead is a boring narrator, who goes about stalking people and getting in the way of police investigations, and not in that endearing way we often see on BBC mysteries. The twist, such as it is, wasn't interesting and I wished that some other culprit had been at the heart of this meandering, choppily written book. On to the next!
