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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Riveting darkness that touches you deeply, 12 Jan 2000
By A Customer
'Safe As Houses' from the Do-Not Press is the second novel length sojourn from Carol Anne Davis, following her magnificent debut work in 'Shrouded'.David is a sadist with a double life. Educated and well meaning, determined not to make the mistakes his abusive father made with him, he is devoted to his wife and infant son. Yet he has a secret, a Secret House to go to, where his women are fantasies, and the fantasies are dark. As time goes by, and more girls vanish from the streets of Edinburgh, his wife Jennifer, meek and timid, concludes that her brilliant husband is not all he seems... Within these pages, you will find no larger-than-life Hannibal Lector figure, embodying pure evil, vile and disturbed to outrageous degrees. A large part of the genius in the work of Carol Anne Davis is that everyone, twisted or otherwise, is just a person, making mistakes, fooling themselves into the justification of evil acts. David, for all of the savagery and evil of his actions at the Secret House, wants the best for his boy, wants to support his wife, has ambitions to make the world a better place through his music. David has so many layers that reading him twists you up. He isn't a sympathetic character - nothing so simplistic. Rather, he is real in ways other writers long to achieve. Jeanette, his wife, holds the novel together in tandem with her murderous husband. A mouse of a woman, convinced of her unworthiness next to her great, artistic husband, she takes a journey through the novel that is both liberating and joyful. As David descends into despair and depravity, she challenges her own self-subjugation, and begins a long climb upwards. With one hand, Davis shows us the misery in David's fall. With the other, she grants us the great freedom his plummet releases in Jeanette. A warning though - the novel is emotionally exhausting, and there is no easy ending. It would be a great shame if there were, for Davis has framed two real lives in 'Safe As Houses', and to suddenly play melodrama or action thriller would be a painful way to end the novel. Instead, she concludes as she has proceeded throughout, with life, misery and wonder. Dark fiction doesn't come blacker than this, nor does it so effectively throw into relief the joys life gives us.
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