It's the dead of winter, and Juliana Smythe is alone in her summer house, an 1899 Victorian, overlooking Lake Bonticou. Juliana, an actress in cinematic thrillers she collectively calls FemJep (translated as "women in peril"), is separated from her husband Matt after an incident of volcanic domestic violence on New Year's Eve for which Juliana was granted a protection order by the court. Now it's February, and there are to be additional hearings. Juliana's trepidation is almost palpable. Does she have enough money to pay the lawyers? Will the court discontinue the protection order? Will Matt return to the house, protection order or not, and again visit his rage on his wife?
Juliana shares with the reader memories of her marriage, from her first date with Matt seventeen years previous, through the spring, summer and fall of the relationship to the present, the agonizing winter. At one point, Juliana muses:
"How long does it take an eighteen-year-old girl to fall in love? About ten minutes." (That's about nine minutes longer than a testosterone-fueled, eighteen-year-old boy brought to a halt by a whiff of perfume and a view of bare skin.)
As an actress that sees her life as an extended movie script, Juliana DREAMS OF RESCUE - by the kindly lawyer or psychologist or next-door neighbor who'll sweep her into his arms and protect and love her. But reality isn't like that, is it? What's High Drama on the Silver Screen reduces to the mundane in the day-to-day drudge. This is to be Juliana's learning curve.
I was immediately intrigued as to the nature of the "Thing in the Box", a piece of evidence Juliana is to present at the next court hearing that will surely convince the judge of Matt's psychological instability. What a clever tease for the reader!
I'm one of the author's biggest fans, having given five stars to all of her previous works. This time, however, I'm bereft to report something less. By the time the nature of the "Thing in the Box" is revealed, the main plot thread has been frayed by tangential events. What's with the creepy vacuum repairman, who, on a housecall to service Juliana's Supralux 699, may have committed the sin of Onan on her mohair shawl? Or the mysterious neighbor across the lake who watches her with a telescope? Or the pervert who breathes heavily over the phone on late night calls? And what about those seven young girls found naked and frozen to death on the lake's ice back in the late 1890s? Was it murder most foul? Indeed, with all the other enigmas resolving themselves, the final court confrontation with Matt is anticlimactic. The storyline, while not becoming uninteresting, just lost its focus, and I finished the book feeling vaguely unsatisfied.
I suspect that there's a lot of Laura in Juliana, especially evident when the latter remembers the loss of her mother at an early age (as the author recalls in SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS). In any case, Cunningham's forte in all her books has been describing her protagonist's feelings. And this reader was immediately absorbed into Juliana's emotional life. I cared about her throughout. For that reason alone, I'm awarding four stars, and hope Laura will understand.