Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

After Jeff Manning suddenly dies, two women who loved him--his wife, Claire, and his co-worker, Tish--are both sent reeling and must figure out how to cope.

• ISBN10: 0544264975
• ISBN13: 9780544264977
• Publish Date: 1 April 2014
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: New Harvest
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 292
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

Catherine McKenzie's Hidden puts a dilemma in front of the reader: how much do we really want to know? The novel kicks off with Jeff Manning being struck by a car, stressed out and not thinking about looking both ways before crossing the street after a bad day at work. The news of his demise devastates two different women: his wife Claire, and his colleague Tish. It's obvious quickly, from the depth of her grief, that Tish has a relationship with Jeff that's above and beyond just coworkers or even just friends, but what was actually there between them? Just some flirtation? Actual romantic feelings? Sex?

The story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Claire, Tish, and a pre-death Jeff himself to explain just what is going on here. Before Claire was Jeff's wife, she was his older brother Tim's girlfriend. Although he's aware of that (obviously) going in, even long after they've married and had a son together, Jeff never quite gets over his jealousy. When one of Tim's rare trips home results in him making a move on Claire during a low moment in their marriage, when she's vulnerable, all of Jeff's old suspicions that he's merely the consolation prize come roaring back and fault lines open up between them. And when he meets Tish, who drifted as aimlessly into her own marriage as she did into her job in HR, their attraction sparks something more. When Claire discovers a text message from Tish on Jeff's broken phone before it dies completely, she finds herself putting together little pieces of evidence, seeing a picture that she can't be quite sure is there.

The whole point of the book seems to be whether or not Claire will find out what exactly there was between Jeff and Tish, a question for which the answer is held back from the reader as well until it's wound up in the epilogue. Which isn't really enough to sustain interest, honestly. McKenzie adds in a bunch of extra characters and situations to flesh it out, but at the end of the day, none of them contributes much to the actual story. I got bored with it and read quickly through the back half of the book so I could just be done with it already. Because once the level of Jeff and Tish's emotional entanglement becomes apparent, the question of whether it ever got physical was almost beside the point: they were cheating, whether or not they'd slept together. The book also suffered for McKenzie's failure to take advantage of the alternating narrators structure to create three different voices for the three people involved. They all sounded similar, Claire and Tish particularly so. And for this kind of story to actually resonate, all of the participants have to be sympathetic or at least interesting. But no one is all that interesting, and only Claire is remotely sympathetic. There's nothing especially rewarding to the reader to be found in Hidden: the writing is just decent, the plot drags, and the characters are one-note. It's not awful, it's just kind of a waste of time.

[Cocktails and Books]

A story involving infidelity in a marriage is always a tough one for me. Not because I can't sympathize with characters or enjoy the storyline, but because I find myself asking the question "what would I do". I think because of that, the story becomes even more emotionally challenging. So it was no surprise that HIDDEN became a really hard book for me.

HIDDEN is told in alternating POVs from Jeff (the husband), Claire (the wife) and Tish (the other woman) as the story of how these three lives intersected is woven. It's not an easy story, watching from the outside, as we see two women's life changed forever when the man who was the center of their lives is suddenly gone. Claire not only has to think of herself, but also their son, as they try to figure out who they go on. Tish has to come to grips with what's been done and refocus on her family.

Tish was the harder character for me to sympathize with. She had a loving husband at home, sure he was gone a lot because of his medical practice, but she had someone. And the fact that she justified what happened with Jeff as he "caught her at the right moment" didn't sit well with me. Of course, I'm also a firm believer that if you're in a relationship and you get to the point where you think you might be going down that cheating path, than you need to get out of that relationship. Tish went into this with eyes wide open and even when she knew it was wrong, kept pressing forward it. She could claim she was going to end things with Jeff, but ultimately, it was Jeff who set the expiration and said they would be done. It was Jeff that said when he looked at the situation, including his wife and son, Tish was the one element of the equation that didn't add up. He made the decision that Claire and Seth were it for him. I don't think, if it was left to Tish, she would have given Jeff up.

Jeff and Claire's were another story. They didn't have a perfect marriage and as we learn, the struggled just like everyone else. So it was hard to see Claire struggle with not only the loss of Jeff, but also to discover that Jeff was not faithful. I'm sure I should hate Jeff in some fashion because of what he did, but it felt like there was something else there that led to what he did. I'm not a believer in tit for tat, but I think on a subconscious level what Jeff did could all be pointed back to his brother Tim's relationship with Claire. Despite the fact that Jeff was married to Claire and they had a life together, I think Jeff still felt like he was competing with his brother. It didn't matter what Claire said, I think it was just a deep rooted fear in him that led him to make a bad decision. Not that the decision should be forgiven, it can't be, but I think I could understand more where he was coming from.

As the blurb to the book says, the story is about choices and the repercussions those choices have. They all made some bad choices, but I think Tish and Claire ended up realizing what is important to them. It was a difficult road, especially for Claire, but she discovers that even though he may have sought something in Tish's arms, he chose to stay with her. They'd both screwed up and chosen each other, which I think helped her in the end.
Despite the tough subject matter, I couldn't put this book down. Catherine McKenzie has a gift for crafting a storyline that pulls you in and evokes a strong emotional response. If you can get through the subject matter, it's a book that needs to be read and an author you should put on your follow list.

[Leah]

A few years ago I read and absolutely loved Catherine McKenzie’s debut novel Spin. It was FANTASTIC. I literally whizzed through the book and I was massively surprised that this was Catherine’s debut novel. It was so assurred, so well written, so warm and funny and honest, and it put Catherine McKenzie on my must-buy-her-books-immediately-no-matter-what list. And I have stuck to that, although I must admit I haven’t gotten around to reading Arranged or Forgotten yet, which makes me so sad, because I am bloody desperate to read them, I just can’t get through my review books quick enough to actually read something I’ve bought! So it was with my immense pleasure that I spied Hidden, Catherine’s fourth novel, on Netgalley. I was super excited to be accepted to review the novel, and I dove in as soon as I’d cleared all my other ebooks!

Hidden was a very interesting read. I’m still, hours later, wondering how I feel about it, because I’m sort of torn. That last chapter really has a lot to answer for, because despite the fact that I know Jeff eventually made the right decision, it actually blew it up and made me question everything I’d previously read. I thought he’d made the right, proper decision, and then it all implodes in that last chapter, and changes what I thought of the novel, what I thought of Jeff, what I thought of Tish. Until then, it was all going very well and I was actually super interested in the novel. Claire was, of course, the character I most cared about. The character I wanted to read more from, always, and I was sort of rooting for her throughout, wanting her to discover just how close Tish and Jeff had gotten. But the novel really left me with so many questions – wondering why marriages just never seem to be as stable as you think, why someone who seems to be happily married (two people, in fact) and why it all goes awry when they meet someone else they might be attracted to.

I never condone cheating, I hate it. I think if you want to be with somebody else, then at least have the decency to let your partner know. It’s only polite! But, in Jeff and Tish’s case that wasn’t actually the case. Despite how much I loved Claire, and felt sorry for her, there was a part of me that enjoyed reading about Tish and Jeff’s ‘thing’. It all seemed to happen so organically, that if they were two single people I would have been rooting for them all the way to the final page, but their circumstances made it so difficult to root for them, and I just wanted them to give it up before it went beyond the point of return. The triple narrative didn’t really help, I’ll be honest, because Tish didn’t seem like an awful marriage-wrecker, and Jeff didn’t really seem the type to be a love rat, and it just seemed to make it all the more confusing! Catherine is a fantastic writer, of that there is no doubt, and she kept me reading all the way to the very end, even if the end did disappoint me immensely.

I suppose the reason the ending disappointed me was the whole theme of the novel – if you can not find out a piece of information that would devastate you, can you just let it be? That’s what Claire finds herself asking as the novel goes on, can she not know what Jeff was up to and be OK with that? Is not knowing better than knowing? And I sort of felt that way about the ending, I would have preferred not to have had the Epilogue. I would have left it out of the book, and just directed the reader to Catherine’s website if they wanted to see it, with a fair warning of that it might make you change your opinion of the novel. A Prologue can’t break a book, because you’re just at the beginning, but an Epilogue sure as hell can, and this was one which I would have preferred to not read, I’ll be honest. Because, as you can tell, it’s all I can talk about. But apart from that, I really enjoyed the novel. Catherine should have way more recognition than she has because she’s an amazing writer, who writes such fascinating, interesting books. I didn’t enjoy Hidden as much as Spin, I’ll be honest (Spin is AMAZING. You must read Spin.), but it did leave me with questions, and it did keep me hooked throughout with the fantastic narrative, I could have just done without the very last chapter, but I will still buy all of Catherine’s books, because they’re great, and this one was not as good as others of hers, but it was still very readable.