Marina Endicott

Apparently set in the 1990s, this novel offers a glimpse into the life of the partner of an RCMP constable. It focuses on Julia Carey, a former dramaturge who moves from Saskatchewan with her significant—taciturn—other, Hardy, to Medway, a town north of Edmonton in rural Alberta. Previously a sports journalist, Hardy has recently undergone training with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We’re told his father had been a member of the force, but it’s not at all clear why Hardy, an show more older recruit, decided to make such a drastic career change.

When the couple first move to Medway, they quickly learn of a young constable’s suicide a few years before. Then, not too far into Hardy’s posting, a fellow he trained with at the Academy in Regina comes to stay with him and Julia for a two-week stress leave. Soon enough it becomes evident that police work is taking a toll on Hardy as well. He becomes, “opaque, exhausted, often impatient, or just bleak in mind,” increasingly visited by “dark moods and irritability,” and eventually incapacitated by PTSD. The novel is a first-person account of Julia’s perceptions and experiences.

During her early days in Medway, Julia fills in for a month at The Observer, the town’s local paper, when Catherine, its editor, takes her annual summer holiday. Julia herself will end up becoming the paper’s editor when Catherine moves on. However, the initial connection with the editor is a valuable one. Having lived in Medway her whole life, she has her finger on the pulse of the town and can fill the newcomer in on local happenings, criminal and otherwise. This is the only way Julia is able to learn about the difficult cases tight-lipped Hardy has been working on—cases that are obviously causing him significant distress and marked changes in behaviour. When her stint at the paper is up, Julia is briefly employed as a substitute teacher at the local high school. Lacking certification, she’s paid a pittance for emotionally draining work. Nevertheless, it offers her further insight into the community. Not long after that, having reconciled herself to infertility, she’s surprised to learn she’s pregnant. Hardy’s response to the news is not the anticipated joyous one. His only remark: He won’t be able to quit his job. No, he won’t, and it costs all of them, as the novel will show.

Overall, THE OBSERVER is a meandering and modest book. It is replete with mundane details of rural and domestic life (barbecues and get-togethers and the names of everyone in attendance) as well as plentiful gossipy information about the lives of locals (including the young widow of the constable who committed suicide, a beekeeper, and Johnny Mair, a volatile and often violent drunk, who is perpetually in trouble with the law). The novel has a very large cast of characters, most only superficially sketched. It’s hard to keep their identities straight. There’s also an overabundance of insignificant events reported on in consistently pedestrian prose. Rather than be given carte blanche to itemize seemingly every single happening, the author should have been taken in hand by her editor and advised to describe only the few most telling incidents.

In the end, I can’t recommend this novel. To me it read like an uninspired memoir or a tidied-up, emotionally flat personal journal—significant for the writer, maybe, but much less so for the reader. I was mostly very, very bored. I made it to the end, but just barely. To be clear: the book isn’t terrible. It’s accessible, and it does offer insight into what life is like for the wives and partners of first responders. The problem is that the whole thing just goes on far too long. Less would really have been so much more. show less

Loved this book and all the characters in it, even those people who were so flawed and determined to be crappy. All seemed so well fleshed out and real. Loved the way the narration switched around from person to person to give all different viewpoints of the story and let you see inside their thoughts and feelings.

I kept wishing it not to end while at the same time reading in every spare second to see what was going to happen. I haven't been that involved in a story in a very long time and show more it was wonderful to be so immersed in this story. show less

I found Good to a Fault absorbing, real people with real lives. People you like, people you don't like living their lives and nobody's bad or good, just who they are. If I compare Marina Endicott to Barbara Pym I am afraid it will give the wrong impression. Pym's world was a microscopically small Anglican place peopled with "good" spinsters and absent-minded priests dancing their roles in a comedy of 1950s English manners. Like Jane Austen, Pym dealt with social and moral issues that remain show more meaningful to us in the 21st century. Marina Endicott's characters don't dance however; they stumble along, lovably, truthfully, resentfully, meanly.....in every way.

You can't really quote from this book, I find. It would be like pulling a thread from a tapestry and expecting you to be able to grasp the beauty of the whole piece. But here is an exchange between the women who are the two main characters:

"Lorraine said, Here's the difference between us: you got taken to the dentist more, and your mother filled your head with stuck-up shit about how great you are, and you got to live in the same house all your life. That's most of it. You went to school longer, and you worked in a clean office instead of cleaning the office. You have a better-looking face and better-looking clothes, and that gives you some feeling that you're better than me."

From the comments I've read on the web, not too many people want to read about a middle-aged single white woman finding meaning in trying to fix the lives of an itinerant family. Endicott described her book as "a domestic comedy wrapped around a sorrowful meditation on God and death. So watch out." show less

In this novel, Endicott recreates an improbable but heart-warming tale of generosity, family and community. While the circumstances, actions and developments are perhaps too optimistic for this age of cynicism, Endicott does not try to simplify or negate complex emotions - which is why the novel works and the reader becomes entangled in this story of relationships. I liked that each character was given a clear and unique voice, that each had their own agenda, perspectives and opinions, show more children included. The ending, while it could have been syrupy and unbelievable, is actually quite charming without being simplistic. All in all, a lovely uplifting story which restores faith in human nature. show less