Emotionally involving story of a father’s declining health & a daughter faced with secrets of the past.
I read the premise and blithely assumed that this would be a run-of-the-mill small-town murder mystery but it was actually far more profound and I was unprepared for the emotional intensity of this truly involving novel.
When London-based illustrator, Emily Kirkland, take a call from her father’s neighbour informing her that seventy-five-year-old Felix has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and his condition is deteriorating, she reluctantly returns ‘home’ to the rural town of Arapito, New Zealand. Emily hasn’t lived there for years but with her twin siblings both of the opinion that the local care home is the answer for their father, she returns somewhat apprehensively. Her father, Dr Felix Kirkland, is a much loved retired community GP and search and rescue volunteer but as a father and husband he was remote, undemonstrative and rarely at home through his work. Emily’s memories of Arapito are also blighted by the disappearance of Leah Parata, neighbour and ecologist, after she set out on a hike to the nearby Ruahine Range of mountains that overlook Arapito. At the time Felix was one of the first to begin the search and it is Leah’s heartbroken mother, Raewyn, who phoned Emily and has been keeping an eye on ailing Felix. It quickly becomes clear that Raewyn wasn’t exaggerating Felix’s decline as Emily witnesses delusions and false memories however as she helps her father to declutter his paperwork several things give her reason to suspect that he might know more about Leah’s disappearance than he has ever disclosed.
With Felix living more and more in the past as his short-term memory fails, his revelations about Leah, along with the insights into his upbringing with a deeply religious mother, seem frighteningly lucid. The lives of both the Kirkland and Parata families are closely entwined and as keeper of what she suspects is a horrific secret and her father’s betrayal, it leaves Emily facing an unenviable dilemma. The novel is set across two timelines, June 1994 when Leah disappeared and Emily’s return in 2019 coinciding with the lead-up to the twenty-five year anniversary of Leah’s disappearance. The evolving relationship between father and daughter is central to this novel and both Felix and Emily are incredibly well-drawn. Norman does a superb job of charting Felix’s gradual decline in what felt to me like an authentic manner and likewise, the impact on Emily as his primary carer. The growing father-daughter is beautifully observed and despite Emily’s evident sadness for her father’s decline, this is also a book about a daughter making sense of the past and coming to understand more about the man her father once was.
The novel has a strong sense of place with the backdrop of the imposing Ruahines dominating the horizon and keeping Leah’s memory ever-present throughout, with the raw beauty and loneliness of rural NZ captured stunningly. Remember Me has a clear vein of suspense running through it which I registered as nerve-shredding anxiety for both the Kirkland and Parata families and the revelations to come. I thought I had largely worked out the disclosures that would unfold and was fearing a messy ending, but Charity Norman surprised me completely with a sublime denouement that felt so wonderfully fitting.
When London-based illustrator, Emily Kirkland, take a call from her father’s neighbour informing her that seventy-five-year-old Felix has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and his condition is deteriorating, she reluctantly returns ‘home’ to the rural town of Arapito, New Zealand. Emily hasn’t lived there for years but with her twin siblings both of the opinion that the local care home is the answer for their father, she returns somewhat apprehensively. Her father, Dr Felix Kirkland, is a much loved retired community GP and search and rescue volunteer but as a father and husband he was remote, undemonstrative and rarely at home through his work. Emily’s memories of Arapito are also blighted by the disappearance of Leah Parata, neighbour and ecologist, after she set out on a hike to the nearby Ruahine Range of mountains that overlook Arapito. At the time Felix was one of the first to begin the search and it is Leah’s heartbroken mother, Raewyn, who phoned Emily and has been keeping an eye on ailing Felix. It quickly becomes clear that Raewyn wasn’t exaggerating Felix’s decline as Emily witnesses delusions and false memories however as she helps her father to declutter his paperwork several things give her reason to suspect that he might know more about Leah’s disappearance than he has ever disclosed.
With Felix living more and more in the past as his short-term memory fails, his revelations about Leah, along with the insights into his upbringing with a deeply religious mother, seem frighteningly lucid. The lives of both the Kirkland and Parata families are closely entwined and as keeper of what she suspects is a horrific secret and her father’s betrayal, it leaves Emily facing an unenviable dilemma. The novel is set across two timelines, June 1994 when Leah disappeared and Emily’s return in 2019 coinciding with the lead-up to the twenty-five year anniversary of Leah’s disappearance. The evolving relationship between father and daughter is central to this novel and both Felix and Emily are incredibly well-drawn. Norman does a superb job of charting Felix’s gradual decline in what felt to me like an authentic manner and likewise, the impact on Emily as his primary carer. The growing father-daughter is beautifully observed and despite Emily’s evident sadness for her father’s decline, this is also a book about a daughter making sense of the past and coming to understand more about the man her father once was.
The novel has a strong sense of place with the backdrop of the imposing Ruahines dominating the horizon and keeping Leah’s memory ever-present throughout, with the raw beauty and loneliness of rural NZ captured stunningly. Remember Me has a clear vein of suspense running through it which I registered as nerve-shredding anxiety for both the Kirkland and Parata families and the revelations to come. I thought I had largely worked out the disclosures that would unfold and was fearing a messy ending, but Charity Norman surprised me completely with a sublime denouement that felt so wonderfully fitting.