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Secrets and Lies and Loneliness

Author: Joy Fielding

Terry Painter is a quiet, unassuming person. She works by day as a nurse at a facility dedicated to caring for elderly, terminal patients. She lives in the house she inherited from her mother, covered in floral prints and filled with a collection of antique lady’s head vases. She works holidays and weekends. She is alone and lonely, a caring soul, forty-years old, still looking for a place in the world to call her own. She’s the perfect victim.

The first time Terry rented out the separate guesthouse to a young woman named Erica, everything went well until Erica disappeared, short on rent. But Terry could use the cash and, secretly, the company, so she tries again and gets another young, bubbly girl: Alison Simms. This time, Terry won’t be drawn in. She was hoping for someone older, more trustworthy, more staid. But something about Alison is simply captivating. Her enthusiasm. Her happiness. Her involvement in every intricate moment of Terry’s life – from insisting on facials and manicures together to helping Terry get a date. It’s a little too perfect. Terry won’t spend the holidays alone this year . . .but she may wish she had. . .

. . . because under the surface, something in her subconscious is flashing red. There are too many strange coincidences: half heard, whispered conversations, conspiratorial looks, obvious lies. Then there are Alison’s creepy, threatening friends. And at night, the raspy phone calls. Terry is in way too deep now, and what can she really tell the police anyway? That her tenant is too nice, too cloying, too ever present, too involved?

Whispers and Lies bakes in the sultry heat of Florida as it slides into a tropical Christmas. Characters bustle around in sundresses singing Christmas carols and old houses find new lives. Passed jovialities over the Thanksgiving table take on eerie double meanings and that too-tight hug before the guests leave is more threat than affection. The atmosphere drips with tension and paranoia but also with a palpable loneliness and the innocence of one abandoned woman who keeps getting used, again and again. You’ll never see where it’s going, but you’ll be there for every heart fluttering step.

Whispers and Lies is a slow burn. We meet Terry and just FEEL every element of her world, from her cozy house to the deep connections she has built with her ailing patients and their families. There is a warmth here, but it only skims the surface. The waters beneath remain tepid, and despite Terry’s apparent content, we feel her lack of real connection. Those cozy chairs only hold one lonely body. Those hospital halls and friendships speak more of the comfort before death than the warmth of living. We see Terry’s desperation long before she sees and acknowledges it herself, and with clever slips, author Joy Fielding shows us how Terry became this way, how her mother subtly abused her, made her into a caretaker who, in turn, could never receive care. This builds connection and empathy, which helps because the middle of the novel is a long haul.

The story is slow, and as the holidays drag at pace, Alison more firmly cements herself in Terry’s life. But it’s all subtle. Late night conversations, visits to shops, the occasional meeting with a nasty friend. There is an aura, an edge of danger to come, but just as Terry predicts, it’s so slight that only she (and we) can feel it. And what can you really do? Politeness dictates that you don’t take little eccentricities out of context, right?

It gets a little tiring, the cat and mouse game, the wondering WHY Terry has been targeted, what Alison and her friends want, and what the connection is with the previous (never seen tenant). We start to lag, to linger. The paranoia becomes like the Florida mosquitos – too pesky to be atmospheric. But it’s the quiet before the storm, and the end makes the wait worth it.

I can’t tell you the twist because that will ruin it, and because you would never believe me anyway. It fits with what we know, but it’s a different thread of logic entirely, a carefully set parallel story that works on the revelation but is absolutely unguessable. I was glued to the page, slack jawed. Surely not. Surely, they wouldn’t – she wouldn’t! You get answers, and an end, and an aching stillness. That’s all I can give you. It’s worth it. Read and trust no one.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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