Something Might Happen

October 13, 2003
A senseless murder in a sleepy seaside town in Suffolk catastrophically disrupts the lives of two families in this rather predictable but artful novel by Myerson (Laura Blundy
; Me and the Fat Man
; etc.). The victim is Lennie, a potter and mother of two, who is found dead in a parking lot after a PTA meeting. Her grisly murder was presumably a random act, and the novel is primarily the story of the emotional reaction of those around her. Tess, the narrator and Lennie's best friend, is jarred from the idyllic domesticity of her life with her four children and husband Mick, and is forced to acknowledge troubling fault lines. It has been a year since she slept with Mick, and a flirtation with the police psychologist sent to comfort Lennie's grieving husband, Alex, turns into something more. Clinging to her infant daughter, Liv, as if to a lifeline—the physical sensations of motherhood are vividly evoked—Tess grapples with her complicated feelings for her husband and her children. Matters take a fantastic turn when Tess's daughter Rosa and son Jordan claim to have seen Lennie, and Rosa wanders off, plummeting Tess into new terror as the village, once a comfortable retreat, comes to seem a sinister dead end, a place trapped between sea and sky. The steady rhythm of Myerson's writing and her precise narration lend her story an elegant inevitability; the spare, smooth-flowing dialogue makes her characters spring vividly to life. Despite the well-worn plot, the author manages to create something rich and intimate, a tale steeped in the physical impulses and mental habits of family life.

October 1, 2003
Myerson's title is coy; something has already happened before this novel begins: Lennie, wife and mother of two, has been gruesomely and inexplicably murdered in her English seaside village. This event opens to scrutiny the lives of all who are close to her. Tess, Lennie's best friend and narrator of the story, becomes our guide, and her roiled emotions color the story. The entire town suffers from the loss and fear that the murder engenders as well as from the suspicions brought to the surface by the police investigation. Love, responsibility, passion, and grief are impossibly tangled, causing people to do foolish things and risk all that they value, exacting an additional cruel price before all is ended. This is a riveting and wrenching story told with beautifully rendered domestic detail. Myerson's writing is so strong that it's impossible not to see and smell what is happening, not to feel the power of the sea or the characters' emotions. Not easy to read, but hard to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)