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Old money, green ivy. Such is Greenwich Park, the posh London neighborhood in which award-winning journalist Katherine Faulkner’s debut novel is set. In this thriller, dirty secrets shatter the idyllic lives of some of London’s wealthiest residents. “Greenwich Park” takes a while to get going, but when it finally does, it is a suspenseful read with a story that blends beautifully into its setting.
The novel begins with a mysterious letter sent from prison to Helen, who is soon revealed to be the story’s protagonist. Helen is the daughter of a famous architect, lives with her husband in her expansive childhood home on the edge of Greenwich Park, and is twenty-four weeks pregnant with their first child. Her life seems perfect — until, well, it isn’t.
As the book — and Helen’s pregnancy — progresses, her life slowly unravels. In the first 150 pages of the novel, strange and foreboding signs bring themselves, one by one, to the doorstep of her perfect home. She starts to receive strange and insistent calls from lenders about a mortgage she and her husband never took out. A strange photo from their past, though torn and discarded long ago, somehow makes its way into a box of her husband’s valuables.
And then, of course, there is Rachel, the boisterous friend whom Helen meets at her prenatal classes. Rachel seems to have little sense of self-awareness and even less regard for rules and manners. She sticks out like a sore thumb in Greenwich Park, and yet her presence begins to take over Helen’s life in an off-putting way.
The 150 pages of exposition in which Faulkner develops the characters of Helen and Rachel are crucial to the novel’s exhilarating ending. Unfortunately, they are also a bit slow. Faulkner attempts to hold readers’ attention by interspersing episodes of a dark and mysterious character throughout Helen’s first-person narration, but the stakes in this section of the book are simply not high enough. It is easy to lose sight of the drama that this exposition is meant to set up, and Faulkner risks losing the attention of some readers.
For those that make it through, however, there is ample reward. About halfway through her book, Faulkner picks up the pace, and “Greenwich Park” becomes much more interesting. Faulkner creates a great deal of suspense by narrating the story from three different points of view. She switches rapidly between concurrent story lines told from the eyes of Helen, her sister-in-law Serena, and her friend Katie. Short chapters make the writing snappy and keep readers on edge as one storyline is broken off to reveal stunning details from the next. The end result is a verifiable page-turner that will have readers racing to its conclusion.
Faulkner’s strengths, however, do not lie only in her brilliant pacing. She is also a wonderfully descriptive writer, and she successfully leverages this ability to infuse her novel with short descriptive passages that punch well above their weight. Her beautiful writing even allows her to use the setting of her novel to make its conclusion that much more tragic. “Greenwich Park” is aptly named, reflecting both the novel’s elitist backdrop and one of its most potent symbols.
All in all, “Greenwich Park” is worth reading past its sluggish first half. Though the novel’s slower moments may not have readers on edge, they lay the groundwork for what is a truly thrilling conclusion, one that will keep readers’ eyes locked on the page. Faulkner may not be fast out of the blocks, but she sure finishes strong.
—Staff writer Daniel S. de Castro can be reached at daniel.decastro@thecrimson.com.
