Lead Review
- Book: Everything Happens for a Reason
- Location: London
- Author: Katie Allen
4.5*
Rachel does everything right in her first pregnancy and she and her husband are keenly looking forward to the birth but when her baby, Luke, is stillborn nothing seems to make sense anymore. She finds herself on maternity leave with no baby to care for and also having to cope with the crass, although well-meaning comments of others, such as “Everything happens for a reason.” Rachel begins to ponder whether there is truth in this statement. Was there a reason for the sudden unexplained death of her beautiful baby boy?” “Could she have been responsible in some way?” These questions lead her to the memory of the day when she first discovered her pregnancy and when she also stopped a man from jumping in front of a London Underground train. Rachel becomes convinced that somehow her action in saving this man’s life has led to the loss of her baby’s life. Driven half-crazy with grief, she embarks on a quest to find him, enlisting the help of Lola, an Underground worker.
Everything Happens for a reason is structured in the form of a series of emails that Rachel sends to Luke, her stillborn son. Although fictional, Katie Allen has used her own experience of having a stillborn child to lend authenticity to Rachel’s story and, in so doing, manages to convey to the reader the unimaginable pain and confusion of such a devastating life event. These emails express Rachel’s thoughts and feelings and can be difficult to follow at times – disjointed and bewildering – making for a somewhat frustrating read, but, on reflection, I think that Allen is conveying to us the way in which Rachel’s thoughts are incoherent, as she tries to make sense of a nonsensical world.
The novel is peopled by an array of quirky and often shadowy figures. Everyone is hard to pin down and it’s difficult to know who to trust. Rachel’s husband, usually referred to as ‘E’ is so distanced from her, he seems almost indifferent to her pain; Lola, the Underground worker who aids her in her quest, remains difficult to understand, not least because she lapses into her native tongue, when she wants to say something that Rachel shouldn’t hear; Ben, whom she rescued, resolutely keeps her out and lies to her. Her friends and family seem to be at one in their utter insensitivity, inviting her to baby showers, sending pictures of their new-borns etc. This is clever characterisation for sure, if not always comfortable to read, but we are left in no doubt about the isolation and confusion Rachel feels. The one ray of sunshine in the novel’s cast of characters, and thank goodness for her, is the delightful Josephine, Lola’s daughter, who brings all the enthusiasm and joie de vivre that only young children are capable of.
Everything Happens for a Reason is set mainly in and around London, but there isn’t a real sense of place in the novel. Rather it feels as if Rachel is never properly anywhere, but constantly travelling about looking for something that she never finds. Clever. If this novel takes the reader to a place, it is Rachel’s private hell.
Katie Allen has done something quite exceptional here. This subject has rarely been tackled quite as honestly and certainly never as well.
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