Morag Joss

In Half Broken Things by Morag Joss the psychological suspense builds slowly until it reaches a fever pitch by the end of the book. This is a story of three lonely and obviously slightly disturbed people, Jean, Michael and Steph who appear to find refuge when they come together. Jean is a house sitter and has been told that due to her age this is her last assignment, Michael is an unsuccessful petty thief and pregnant Steph is on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Living an illusion that show more they are family, they set up housekeeping in Walden Manor, the house that Jean is currently the caretaker of. Her assignment is from January to September and as they settle more and more into the house, the reader can see that these three have no intention of giving up their illusions when the rightful owners return.

Living off the manor’s provisions, caring for the garden and grounds, they ignore the outside world and bond together and revel in their new found security. Of course, the clock is ticking and the day of final reckoning is coming closer. Suddenly things start to go sideways with the arrival of an unexpected visitor.

Morag Joss allows things to advance slowly, but as the characters’ self-preservation becomes more extreme, she builds more and more tension into the story. This gradual unwinding of the fantasy life these three are living speeds up and eventually a chain of events is unleashed that brings the story to a dramatic close. Half Broken Things is a thought provoking story of moral complexity and I am a huge fan of this author as she displays a deftness with her characters and their situation that has the reader both appalled and yet with a small part that is rooting for them. show less

The Night Following by Morag Joss is a book that I felt both in my gut and in my mind. Her finely drawn descriptions, her ability to capture both the intricate and mundane thoughts that move through one’s head, her expressive styling of how grief can affect a person, and the ever so slow build-up of tension as we are drawn into a story that gradually gets creepier and creepier.

Finding evidence of a husband’s infidelity and immediately getting behind the wheel of a car is a recipe for show more disaster. With her thoughts churning, feeling both a sense of personal betrayal and that she’d been living a lie, she hits a woman on a bicycle and kills her. She gets out, inspects the body, gathers some papers that are scattered across the road. Then she returns to her car and drives away. From this point, spiralling out of control, she embarks on a path that can only lead to disaster.

Morag Joss writes of the loss, loneliness, and grief that comes for both the widower of the victim, and the driver as she loses her marriage and her sense of identity. In alternating chapters, we read of these two and, in a stroke of brilliance, Joss also picks up a third storyline, the victim was a writer and left behind a manuscript which is very revealing. These three stories are interwoven and eventually interconnected.

The Night Following is a slow burner of psychological suspense that is moody, dark and compelling. This is not a neatly packaged story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The Night Following is a stark and disturbing look at the inner turmoil brought on by guilt, loneliness and grief. show less

Deborah and Howard have lived in a smallholding on the bleak moors of Exmoor for over thirty years. They have spent most of their adult lives in a determined effort to 'return to the land', to eke out a living in balance with nature. They have tried to turn their rented land into many things, a B&B, a spiritual retreat, a spa but it all ended in disappointment. Just as they are planning to try a yoga retreat, Howard suffers a stroke. Deborah, now running things alone while taking care of show more Howard, has only one joy in life - the weekly emails from their son, Adam. It is clear that Adam writes only out of a sense of duty but Deborah needs to believe he will come for a long awaited visit.

Having convinced herself that Adam will come, she prepares everything to make him happy including his favourite meal. However, instead of Adam, two men appear at the door. Despite Deborah's attempts to make them leave, they insist they will only stay one night. This one small incident will have a huge impact on Deborah and Howard's lives bringing all their disappointments, mistakes, and failures to the surface, forcing them to reevaluate everything they have done and believed.

As I read this novel, I kept thinking of the words of Thoreau:

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

So I wasn't surprised when, in some notes at the end, author Morag Joss mentions this quote. Our Picnics in the Sun is a story of love and loss, of the small disappointments which fill our lives and keep us from moving or moving on. It is filled with complex characters, driven by unrealistic hopes, thwarted by luck, and unable to change the direction of their lives.The story is told, in the present, by Deborah, who until the end is not always a reliable narrator and, even at the end, she does not tell us everything. In the past, Adam's story is told in third person as we learn how he became so divorced from his parents.

It is only near the end, we learn what has chained Howard and Deborah to this land despite all their disappointments. It is only when they begin to understand what has kept them here that resolution is possible. The end, itself, is both unsettling and inevitable and one that will resonate with the reader long after they turn the last page. show less

Best advice: don't read Among the Missing if you are depressed or likely to become depressed. Ms. Joss is a polished writer, but this story about outcasts living on the edge of normal society has no good conclusion possible from the outset.
A bridge collapses in Scotland, and as a result three misfits take up life together in an abandoned cottage within sight of the disaster. Silva has lived across the river with her husband and daughter, eking out a bare living because they are in the show more country illegally, escaped from some unnamed Eastern European country. Ron has been living in the back of his Land Rover and traveling aimlessly since his release from prison on seven counts of manslaughter. The unnamed woman who calls herself Annabel has used the bridge disaster to run away from her husband who wants her to terminate her new pregnancy. These people are so mired in their individual tragedies that a reader gets only hints of their normal personalities. Silva is practical and efficient; Ron is basically kind; Annabel is needy. At first, the relief of having a place to call home and their united purpose to bring Annabel's baby safely into the world seem to bind them together constructively. Then cracks in the relationships appear.
The denouement is harrowing. Read it at your own risk! My thanks to ER for letting me take mine. show less