She Treads Softly: You'll Never Know, Dear

Sunday, June 11, 2017

You'll Never Know, Dear

You'll Never Know, Dear by Hallie Ephron
HarperCollins: 6/6/17
eBook review copy; 304 pages
ISBN-13: 9780062473615

You'll Never Know, Dear by Hallie Ephron is a recommended novel of suspense featuring three generations of women and a mystery set in South Carolina.

Forty years ago four-year-old sister Janey Woodham disappeared from her year, along with the doll her mother made her. Janey's seven-year-old sister, Lissie, was supposed to be keeping an eye on her, but she ran after a a puppy that suddenly appeared in her yard. When Lissie returned home, Janey and her doll were gone. Now Lis has a daughter in college, but she still blames herself for Janey's disappearance. Her mother, Miss Sorrel, has fashioned individual, hand-made porcelain portrait dolls for years, with help from her bossy next-door neighbor Evelyn Dumont. Every year on the anniversary of Janey's disappearance she puts out an ad offering a large reward for a doll, Janey's doll, knowing that she will recognize it.

When a college student in a beat-up car answers the ad, Miss Sorrel knows it is Janey's doll, but the girl runs away rather than answering questions about where she got it. That night Miss Sorrel's kiln explodes, sending both her and Lis into the hospital and bringing Lis's daughter, Vanessa, home. This sets into motion a search for the mysterious young woman and an unraveling of a decades old mystery.

You'll Never Know, Dear is definitely more character driven than a novel of great suspense. The mystery is easy to figure out, so the pleasure in this one is in the characterizations of the women. Ephron does a nice job developing her characters and placing them in the context of the story.

While it starts out slowly and doesn't really provide much suspense until the end, it does reaches a satisfying conclusion, which makes it a good summer reading choice. In many ways this novel would actually make a better movie because of all the dolls that are collected and sitting around the house. I think the visuals of dolls, staring at the viewer, could make this much creepier and up the suspense. (Just consider the cover and a house full of staring dolls.)

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.