THE SECRET BETWEEN US by Barbara Delinsky
Novelist Barbara Delinsky is cut from the same cloth as writer Jodi Picoult. Both women write about topical events and give them a human touch. But where Picoult is more factual, Delinsky is more emotional. She looks for the soft, gooey center and frames her story around the human element every time. In her latest novel she looks at the situation wherein a mother and daughter are in a car when an accident occurs. The daughter had been driving but the mother takes the blame. Pretty intriguing, huh?
Deborah Monroe and her sixteen-year-old daughter Grace are in a car. Grace is driving and has been doing so since Deborah picked her up from a friend's house where she had been studying. It is a rainy horrible night and they are almost home when there is a thud against the side of the car. Immediately the two women know they have hit something. It turns out to have been a man, Grace's history teacher. He came out of nowhere and virtually ran into their vehicle.
Deborah has Grace run on home and see about her brother. Deborah remains at the scene of the accident and calls the police. The man is alive and is taken by ambulance to the hospital. In answer to the policeman's questions, Deborah implies that she was driving. It is a lie that grows and grows as the incident becomes more and more complex.
Years ago Grace Kelly, princess of Monaco, was killed in a car crash. For years thereafter it was rumored that her daughter Stephanie was actually driving the car and was the cause of the accident that killed her mother. That incident is even mentioned in this book.
Deborah's life is a complicated one made more complicated by the accident. She is a divorcee' on bad terms with her ex-husband. Her mother is dead and she and her father are in medical practice together. She begins to think he has a drinking problem. Meanwhile her sister announces to her that she is pregnant - by a sperm donor. She tells her not to tell their father.
You can see there are a million "human" problems filling the pages of this book, and all of them are interesting. Still when the book reaches it's end the problems have mostly been solved but not in a satisfying way. Everything seems too pat and too easily resolved. I expected more high tension and difficult results.
Barbara Delinsky is a very good writer but this time the resolution of her story got away from her. She tried to be too neat and it diminished the impact of her story. She captured the human elements involved but "happily ever after" shouldn't have been an option to these dire situations.
THE SECRET BETWEEN US is published by Doubleday. It contains 343 pages and sells for $25.95.