Cruel Habitations (Paperback)

Jacquie and Alison Barnett have led rather restricted and circumscribed lives as members of a nonconformist sect. However, Jacquie is about to be married, and has privately resolved to have at least one grand fling before she settles into the prefect stay-at-home wife mold that is expected of her. She manages to persuade her parents to allow her and her younger sister, Alison, to go to Greece for a holiday. Once there, Jacquie's fast behaviour makes Alison very uncomfortable. But it is Alison, and not Jacquie that ends up in trouble. Alison falls rather hard for another British holidayer, Mike, and later finds herself pregnant. And when her family finds out of her predicament, Alison is literally thrown out onto the streets to fend for herself. Eleven years pass and no one has heard a word from Alison since that fateful day. With the failure of her marriage, Jacquie has moved back home to live with her parents and to take care of them. And with her father's death, Jacquie discovers that he at least had never relinquished hope that Alison would come back home again, for he has divided everything equally between the two sisters. With her father's asserts frozen, it becomes imperative for Jacquie to find Alison at once. Motivated by both guilt and need, Jacquie embarks on the quest to find her sister. And this soon takes her to the cathedral city of Westmead, to the town in which Alison believed that Mike lived. Will Jacquie find Alison happily married, and with children, or will Westmead prove to be a dead-end?

"Cruel Habitations" is rich in atmosphere. Kate Charles does a wonderful job of projecting both the confining and claustrophobic environment of both the Free Baptist Fellowship that the Barnetts belonged to, as well as the enclosed and insular world of the cathedral city of Westmead. But what really captivates in this novel is the relationships that the denizens of Westmead have with each other. True, wondering if Jacquie would uncover more clues that would given her a clearer idea of what really became of Alison, did take up a lot of my attention; however I was also caught up with the marriage woes of Sophie and Chris Lilburn, new residents to Westmead -- Sophie's difficulty at conceiving a child, coupled with her feeling of estrangement and abandonment in Westmead, is taking a toll on the marriage. And then there is the strange and suspicious behaviour of the ex-Head Verger, Leslie Clunch, who gives Sophie the creeps. Why is he so obsessed with her? And then there is the unresolved murder of a young woman who was found strangled in the very street that Chris and Sophie now live in... How all these seemingly disparate threads all come together, is what makes "Cruel Habitations" such riveting reading. Kate Charles's prose style is both restrained and lyrical without being florid, and her manner in which she portrays her characters is crisp and to the point. And although this is a rather lengthy tome, that leap frogs over a decade, and between the towns of Westmead and Sutton Fen, I was surprised at the rate in which the novel unfolded -- continuously, smoothly and quickly.

"Cruel Habitations" is a great read, especially if you're looking for something a little more substantial than a mere murder mystery. It is such a shame that Kate Charles's novels aren't being released with more fanfare, and that they are not more easily available. I can only hope someone with the power remedies this situation, and soon.

The emotional lives her characters lead seem based in a genuine perceptiveness. The flip side of the "village mystery," a side that allows the claustrophobic nature of village life to intervene, appears strongly in her books. Ms Charles manages to convey this claustrophobia without adversely affecting the anglophilia which her readers no doubt share. Ms Charles also comes across as a trifle high-church, but again she combines this with a warmth that allows it all to remain appealing.

Unlike the classic cozy mystery, Ms Charles' books are emotionally complex views of English village and church life, and I enjoy them immensely. Her lead characters have a slight tendency to submissiveness, but this contributes to the sense of realism that one can maintain while reading these excellent books. In this book in particular, one can cheer on her lead character as she leaves behind the cult to which her family had belonged.