Sundial by Catriona Ward
This is my second Catriona Ward novel and the first one was very interesting, without referring back to my review of The House on Needless Street I remember it being a masterpiece or at least close to one. I made sure my horror friends went and read it right away. I reserved Sundial at the library on the strength of that novel and forgot about it until it was waiting on my hold shelf at the library. I knew the title was a Shirley Jackson homage but never anything about the plot going in.
For the first 70 pages, I was hooked starting the book close to my bedtime I had to make myself put the bookmark in and go to bed. In the morning I told a co-worker who is a reader that I might have a book for her. That is how strong I think the opening of the book is.
Ward is a great writer of prose who makes character and inner monologue have a drive to them that makes you interested in the characters. Here our point of view shifts between Rob and her daughter Callie. There is also a time shift in Rob's point of view. If pressed to explain what Sundial is by the first act I would say it was a Psychological horror novel about motherhood. It starts very focused on these feelings.
“I don't know what it's like for other people, but love and nausea are often indistinguishable to me”
The first hundred or so pages feel like a very straightforward exploration of tough issues facing Mothers, and parents. Many of them have to confront the fact that they feel they have made a mistake when all society pressures them to love their children no matter what. This was a very interesting place for the novel to go.
In that first act, we knew that Rob suspected her husband of cheating and that she is willing to put up with it if it keeps the family together. She loves her youngest daughter but Callie her oldest is a challenge. Callie is mean, and cruel sometimes. She is close to her father but drives Rob away at every turn. Then Rob finds some disturbing art that Callie is making from the bones of animals. This alarms her.
“Kids are mirrors, reflecting back everything that happens to them. You’ve got to make sure they’re surrounded by good things.”
It is around this time that Rob takes Callie for a little mother-daughter time at the place where she grew up in the desert. Once up there the novel lost steam. The back story of Callie and how she came into the family, the reasons by Rob was strange to start coming in back story. Those elements getting revealed as they did would have made more sense to mean if Callie was the main point of view character.
It seemed convenient that she didn’t think about or explain in her internal monologue that she was a part of animal experiments and cult behavior growing up. Does that sound like a different novel? It felt like a different novel. For whatever reason, it felt different to me.
I loved the last novel I read by Ward and I was equally confused but the threads wove together and the unreliable narration made sense within the context of the structure. Here the plot of the second half didn’t bring clarity for me, it made it murkier. I think I wanted the novel I thought I was getting for 75 pages at the start. Catriona Ward is a great writer and based on the strength of the first novel I will be back. In the end, a great start and an ending that didn’t work for me ends up being a just OK book.
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