The Heights

Louise Candlish The Heights Simon & Schuster, 2021

Thank you, Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for this uncorrected proof copy for review.

Louise Candlish has had me immersed in her fictional worlds from when I was introduced to her work through Our House. Now I have had the pleasure of engagement in such novels as Those People, The Sudden Departure of the Frasers, and The Other Passenger. Of course, there are more, but one of the pleasurable features of opening yet another Louise Candlish novel is that each has something different to recommend it. Although they are often introduced with comments about the twists and turns, this phrase has become overused. What I want is a twist that is smooth, is logical, and has a background in the information I already have about the plot and characters. In The Heights Louise Candlish has accomplished this once again.

Candlish’s novel begins in a library where a writing group is in its third meeting with the writing instructor. One attendee is a journalist; another is a woman who has no notion of how to begin her story. Although the instructor, Felix Penney, is named, an unnamed member of the group, who is ‘closer to fifty than forty’ and ‘has a quality to her that’s impossible to tear your eyes from. A charisma. A pathos’ is to become the key character, Ellen Saint. The novel is divided into three parts. Part One, Killing Time and Saint or Sinner, features the writing course, where Ellen as the author of Saint or Sinner becomes the principal character; Part Two, Killing Time, turns to Vic Gordon, her first husband, who tells the story from his perspective, ‘now and then’; Part Three, Saint or Sinner returns to Ellen; Part Four, Killing Time, features the journalist from the writing course, then Vic, Ellen, and Kieran. Each Part moves the stories along with a level of empathy with the predominant characters while ensuring that their flaws become apparent. At the same time as peripheral characters become more closely identified with Kieran and Ellen’s relationship, seeming clarity about events shows them to be more complex. The reader is forced into the lives of Ellen and her family, Kieran and his past and present relationships, and events that seamlessly link the events and characters into a tense whole.

Many of these events are shown through Ellen Saint’s novel, Saint or Sinner, which follows the introduction in the library. She begins with a sighting of a person who has been dead for two years. This ‘monster’ who destroyed the writer’s life, stands on the roof of a building in Shad Thames, a redevelopment. The redevelopment changes a formerly shadowy, poor dock region of London into a glossy area of high rise, roof gardens, and, fortunately for Ellen, small windows that provide a large market for the extravagant luxurious lighting she designs. She is working when she sees Kieran Watts, on the highest building in the area, possibly about to throw himself off? Not him, the strong controlling man of Ellen and her family’s bad dreams, But Ellen who, in his situation might well do so – she suffers from ‘high place phenomenon’. She ends her first chapter with a compelling statement, from which the remainder of her novel advances.

From Ellen’s perspective, Kieran Watts is manipulative, dangerous to her and her family, and a constant source of fear because of his malign influence on her son Lucas. Lucas is her child from her first marriage to Victor. He has been chosen by his school to provide support for Kieran who has been fostered by a family from the school catchment area. From Lucas’s perspective Kieran is a wonderful addition to his life; Freya, Ellen’s child from a second marriage to Justin, is initially ‘just a younger sister’ and almost immune to events; and Justin, despite Ellen’s concerns, wants to keep the peace. The family dynamics, including Vic’s sympathy with Ellen’s distresses (and they are many, and pronounced) keep the tension at a high level, without becoming theatrical. Ellen’s concerns feel real, she involves the reader in what might, under calmer circumstances, be seen as prejudices – but the pace prevents a calming look at what is happening or might be happening.

Immersion into Louise Candlish’s fictional world in The Heights is far from comfortable. But once again, it is worth the discomfort, as is any exhilarating journey, fictional or not.