What You Did by Claire McGowan

I suppose this is a book about the lies we tell to others and, more importantly ourselves.  How we manipulate our perceptions to make ourselves feel better about our lives or to give an outward impression to others that we really do have it all.  I suppose this is a book about friendship, jealousy, love, obsession and regret.  I say suppose because it is so bleak and dreary that it is really hard to tell exactly what it is about.  I really, really did not enjoy this one at all - in fact I did think long and hard about whether to give this one or two stars; in the end I plumped for two simply because it is a very tough subject to broach.

Ali and Mike seem to have the perfect post-Oxford life.  2 Children, a beautiful country home.  Mike is a successful Lawyer and Ali doesn't need to work but she has a chairpersonship for a Woman's refuge and does a little bit of journalism via thinkpieces.  They congratulate themselves on having it together, even better they are still close friends with their group from University days and now, 20-some years later, they are all gathering together for a celebration.  Everything seems to go swimmingly, if a little drunkenly, until Karen staggers in to the kitchen in the small hours of the morning screaming after being assaulted in the garden - an assault that left her neck braceleted with bruises, blood trickling down her thigh and her personality in tatters.

Up until this point I was with the book all the way.  Yes, Ali came across as a little sanctimonious and smug, particularly with her "charity work" and her reactions during the meeting regarding a woman assaulted at the safe house by her husband.  The party was pretty much how you would expect it to go - too much booze, simmering resentments that had festered since student days held barely in check.  So far so good, if a little harrowing in places.  The problems really start in the aftermath of Karen's assault.  Not just problems with the characters but problems for this reader.

I really, really got sick of the flashbacks to 1996.  I understand the purpose of them, thematically, but what grated was each flashback starts at more or less the same point and recounts what happened on their Leaver's Ball to Martha Rasby.  It just felt like each time we returned to it we started in the same place and so got to read through a load of information we already knew to be drip fed one tiny little piece of information that may or may not be important.  I did read each and every one, despite being sorely tempted to skip through but I became more and more frustrated with them.

None of the characters are particularly likeable and I felt it difficult to dredge up and empathy for any of them.  Somehow I found myself almost disliking each and everyone of them, but particularly Ali (unfortunately she is our main narrator so this was a big problem).  She spends so long whining to herself and refusing to face up to reality I just wanted to shake her.  Yes, I get it that her whole world has been shaken up and the rug pulled from beneath her very vocal beliefs and made her look long and hard at herself but I really could not dredge up any sympathy for her.

I appreciate that this is a difficult subject to tackle and the author did so fairly well.  Where I feel the story fails is the lack of a firm editorial hand.  There is a lot of repetition of events (past and present), an awful lot of rehashing of emotions and it just felt like so much wordy padding.  This could have been a much tauter story and would likely have been more impactful for it.

Bleak subject, populated by horrible characters with some very dubious "twists" thrown in to the mix.  Not a book I could recommend.