Marilyn's Mystery Reads

It’s hard to imagine a more unhappy childhood than the one Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick had.  Bullied unmercifully by her schoolmates, her only friend is Daphne, who is there for Mabel when no one else is.  Other than Daphne, the only bright spots in her life are her aunt Cess and Cess’s friend Ness.  The two women stay with Mabel when her parents are traveling, which they do quite often.  They visit England, Hong Kong, and South Africa, among other places, sending their daughter post cards and letters but never inviting her to travel with them.

When the novel opens, Mabel is eighty-one, and she wants you to know that she doesn’t look her age.  Not because she’s attractive, she tells you, but because she doesn’t fit the stereotype of a woman that age, one who is petite (she is six feet tall), who is frail (she has broad shoulders), and who calls everyone dear (I can’t use her favorite word here).  Yes, she’s a piece of work for sure.

She is living in a small town on the outskirts of Melbourne and keeping to herself as much as possible.  She ignores nearly all her neighbors, convinced they dislike her.  The first exception is Peter, the sixty-six-year-old living across the street who is available when Mabel needs some assistance.  The second exception is Persephone, the only child on the block.  Mabel would like to ignore Persephone, but the seven-year-old will not be ignored, and she is constantly either in Mabel’s kitchen (uninvited) or on her porch (same).

The day everything begins to implode for Mabel is the day that her neighbor’s dog doesn’t stop barking.  Fed up with the noise and with Ishaan’s ignoring it, she climbs over the fence separating their yards and makes her way to his back door.  She stops several feet short of it, however, when she sees him lying on his kitchen floor, his eyes open and unblinking.

As soon as the police realize that Mabel is actually better known as Mad Mabel, Australian’s youngest convicted murderer, she becomes the target of print and television reporters and podcasters, all eager to interview her.  Her neighbors, with the exception of Peter, become even less friendly than before.

She chooses two young reporters, Libby and Adeem, to tell her story to, and Libby begins the interview with recording how Mabel was convicted at age 15 of killing her father.  Strangely, however, recounting her life story to the reporters appears to lift a burden that Mabel has been carrying her entire life and opens her up to friendships she never thought she would experience.

Mad Mabel is a wonderful read.  Her past and present are interwoven seamlessly, and it’s easy to understand how she became the embittered, solitary woman she is when the book opens and how she allows herself to befriend her neighbors as the novel progresses.

The characters in the book are perfect:  Mabel, the victim of a lifetime of cruelties both large and small; her beloved aunt Cess, her mother’s sister, who brought caring and love into her life; her father, a man who not only dislikes his daughter but actively works to make her life miserable; Persephone, who wants to be best friends with Mabel; Roxanne, Persephone’s mother, who is in hiding from her child’s brutal father.  Each one is beautifully delineated and essential to the story.  Plus the two twists at the end of the novel took me totally by surprise.

You can read more about Sally Hepworth at this website.

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