by Jennie Godfrey
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia, 2024
Publisher’s blurb
Yorkshire, 1979
Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South. Because of the murders.
Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn’t an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv’s mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?
So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don’t. But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families – and between each other – than they ever thought possible.
What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?
Review
by Jacquie Byron
I remember once hearing a psychologist talk about family trauma and children. When big things go wrong within families, she said, parents often try and shield the kids by either lying or not telling them the whole truth. The problem with this is that children are perceptive and sensitive; they might not know what’s gone wrong, but they know something has. Without the correct information their imaginations can run amok, leading them to dangerously wrong conclusions or, worse still, to blaming themselves for the trouble. I kept thinking about this while reading Jennie Godfrey’s novel.
It’s the late 70s and Miv is 12 years old. She’s living in a Yorkshire town that, because of the mines, used to be a thriving place. Now, with the closures, it feels like a place of unemployment, discontent, gossip and simmering violence. The clothes, social mores, facial hair and television of this time and place are brought to life evocatively, hand in hand with the racism and misogyny. Despite the serious underlying story, Godfrey deftly scatters lightness and humour throughout. You have to smile at the days when a long-haired mother brazenly wearing jeans to school pick-up is practically considered a harlot by the others who “all seemed to be the same shape and size of drudgery, a kind of wallpaper to our lives”. There are a lot of cardigans and thick tights in this book.
As mentioned, The List of Suspicious Things is told from 12-year-old Miv’s point of view which, as a narration device, can be tricky. Here, the voice of this brainy, socially awkward girl is refreshingly believable. Her scholastic smarts let her get away with being more insightful and articulate than your average pre-teen. Miv’s growing curiosity about the world of adults and her determined self-awareness are summed up when describing her best friend Sharon, who becomes her partner-in-(solving)crime. Sharon is initially forced into the friendship by the girls’ parents but, according to Miv, she is kind and therefore sticks with it. “And somehow we fitted together so that eventually you couldn’t see the join,” is Miv’s tender observation.
Don’t panic crime readers if I’m making this sound like a young adult, coming-of-age book. Rest assured, there are some nasty things going in within these pages.
Not growing up in the UK, it’s hard to get one’s head around how pervasive the fear of the killer they dubbed The Yorkshire Ripper was. Apparently, women and girls across the north walked in groups after dark or stayed indoors, all because of this one predatory, hideously violent man. Miv and Sharon’s decision to list and – eek – track suspicious people and goings-on in the streets of their town creates tension, as does early foreshadowing that we will indeed encounter tragedy ahead. We meet a number of seriously revolting and just sadly creepy characters along the way and more than once I thought the Ripper himself had sidled by. You’ll have to read the book to find out either way. The idea that someone like this can exist among us, be someone’s husband, brother or son, is a particularly well examined if unnerving element of the book.
Finally, it seems worth noting that, at age 53, this is the author’s debut novel and she’s bringing such a lovely fresh voice to the party. At one point, Miv describes her pal Sharon as being like a kaleidoscope, “endlessly full of colour, changing but always landing somewhere beautiful”. To me they are lovely words to read and a lovely idea to cling on to.