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A review by randykraft
Hush Little Baby by Suzanne Redfearn
3.0
It’s not a new story but it bears repeating: accomplished woman marries for love, discovers she married a stranger, in this case an abusive stranger, and has to find her way out to protect her children. That’s the premise. Simple enough. Perfect fodder for a page-turner. And as it published in soft-cover, all the better.
What is new is a happily married architect seizing the downtime of the recession to write thriller fiction. This was not the first novel Laguna local Suzanne Redfearn has written in the last few years, but the first to be published, and I imagine more will follow.
What she brings to her fiction is her own compassion, with a focus on human foibles. There are no single dimensional characters here: no one is perfect, not even the kids, and no one is completely innocent. Even the horrible husband has moments of kindness and the abuse victim goes beyond the norm for self-preservation.
Redfearn said recently that she has seen marriages erode and was struck by the warfare former lovers will wage.
“I wanted to convey the terror – the manipulation and the subterfuge, that’s what is chilling.” She has also observed ostensibly grounded, dare we say happy women and loving mothers, keep up a good face even as they disintegrate under a barrage of cruelty.
The novel follows on the heels of “Gone Girl” a record-breaking success, and reads like a screenplay, with a series of twists and turns as well as a solid mix of characters who become unwilling participants and victims. Within the heavy plotting, the story poses questions not only of fidelity to marital vows, but issues related to parenting and community and the gender power struggle because Redfearn never meant to be a writer. However, with time on her hands she began to fashion some of the story ideas she has jotted down now and then, which she then built from the ground up just as she might construct a blueprint. Now, she says, “I might have discovered what I want to do.”
What is new is a happily married architect seizing the downtime of the recession to write thriller fiction. This was not the first novel Laguna local Suzanne Redfearn has written in the last few years, but the first to be published, and I imagine more will follow.
What she brings to her fiction is her own compassion, with a focus on human foibles. There are no single dimensional characters here: no one is perfect, not even the kids, and no one is completely innocent. Even the horrible husband has moments of kindness and the abuse victim goes beyond the norm for self-preservation.
Redfearn said recently that she has seen marriages erode and was struck by the warfare former lovers will wage.
“I wanted to convey the terror – the manipulation and the subterfuge, that’s what is chilling.” She has also observed ostensibly grounded, dare we say happy women and loving mothers, keep up a good face even as they disintegrate under a barrage of cruelty.
The novel follows on the heels of “Gone Girl” a record-breaking success, and reads like a screenplay, with a series of twists and turns as well as a solid mix of characters who become unwilling participants and victims. Within the heavy plotting, the story poses questions not only of fidelity to marital vows, but issues related to parenting and community and the gender power struggle because Redfearn never meant to be a writer. However, with time on her hands she began to fashion some of the story ideas she has jotted down now and then, which she then built from the ground up just as she might construct a blueprint. Now, she says, “I might have discovered what I want to do.”