Lead Review

• Book: The Long, Long Afternoon
• Location: California
• Author: Inga Vesper

Review Author: Tina Hartas

4.5*
Welcome to Sunnylakes where the lawns are manicured to the nth degree, the picket fences are just so and the people are white and affluent. It is indeed a sunny place (the temperatures in the summer, when the story takes place, are high and the weather humid and cloying) but the people behind their twitching curtains are less so. The women are largely on mood medication to help them cope with their days. Look behind the scenes and the machinations, nastiness and gossip lie just below the surface. The marriages are glossy on the outside but look just a little deeper and the cracks are there for all who choose to look.

Ruby Wright is a young black woman who travels from her home in South Central to clean for various members of the community, and she is particularly fond of Joyce Haney, as they have, to some extent, shared their individual backstories and have developed a bit of a bond. Joyce has treated Ruby reasonably well, whereas the other women, for whom Ruby works, only see her in terms of the colour of her skin and are dreadfully dismissive of her. Joyce has taken care of the family home, looks after the 2 children, she tends the geraniums on her porch – and she is struggling with thwarted ambitions to paint.

Joyce has seemingly disappeared and Ruby is first on the scene, where, in the simmering heat, she finds a pool of blood gently coagulating on the floor of the kitchen, together with two rather terrified children. She is immediately a person of interest, a suspect, in Joyce’s disappearance. Mick, the detective in charge, has a good nose for an honest person and soon draws Ruby in as a kind of confidante – this is very unusual, given the times, and Ruby’s family members are very wary that she would be sharing anything at all with a white police officer, they rightly fear trouble will be brought to the house.

Oh, the dramas that are going on behind the scenes; because of Ruby’s domestic role, she is aware of the seething secrets and of the lies that are being told. The author really brings the era of melamine and formica society to light, set against the powerful backdrop of racial tensions of the era. She then folds in the stultifying heat and creates a concoction of dramatic events that gradually unfold.

The plot is very much an homage to the 1950s, creating a storyline that develops in a tense and gradual way. The ending, in terms of today’s storytelling is unusual, it didn’t feel altogether credible but I do think it is fitting for the era and therefore nicely rounds off the story.

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