[REVIEW] Joy Fielding's Life Penalty

[rfmcdonald]

Over the past two decades, Canadian author Joy Fielding has managed to carve out a niche for herself as a writer of taut thrillers exploring what happens to families when these bonds break down. I've read some of her books, and I've enjoyed them. Unlike Jodi Picoult, who explores similar scenarios, Fielding tends not to pull any punches. It's Fielding's third novel, 1984's Life Penalty, that sticks with me.

Fielding begins with a typical enough tragic scenario: A happy suburban mother discovers that her young daughter has been raped and murdered and, disoriented by grief and madness, goes on a hunt for the monster who killed her. As someone--perhaps our very own frumiousb--notes in an Amazon.ca review, Fielding's writing is clunky, though I can attest that she improved over time. Where Life Penalty succeeds completely for me is in its depiction of a paranoid world where everyone and everything is either risky or at risk. Random crime, epidemic disease, the perils of consumerism, the sense of being left to one's devices--all of them come through to produce a convincing portrait of a claustrophobic and panicked society. Other books have gotten more acclaim with fewer accomplishments.