Neighbours

Betty, Sheila, and Bertha live next door to each other, but very much apart, two of them quite unaware of the tragedy that is developing in their midst.

Bertha and Sheila have problems of their own – problems that require most of their attention. Sheila, startled by her husband Ed’s sudden confession of infidelity, must somehow reconcile her inevitable anger, resentment, and distrust, with her concern for her children and her continuing feelings of attraction to Ed. At the same time, Bertha, aging, arthritic, and fiercely proud, is engaged in a growing struggle against the disability that she knows will eventually tear her from the home she loves and make her dependent on her son and his wife.

However, it soon becomes apparent, even to Sheila and Bertha, that Betty’s problem is the most serious of all. As they both grow more involved with Betty, they realize that her slovenly appearance, her chaotic and ineffective housekeeping, and her strangely detached relationship with her husband and daughter are merely symptoms of something much more disturbing within Betty herself. In fact, as her eccentricities grow increasingly bizarre, her neighbours are forced, with growing alarm, to the conclusion that Betty is sliding closer and closer to the brink of madness.

And what is the mystery in her past that seems to be driving her ever more swiftly towards the edge?

Despite the efforts of Sheila and Bertha, the concern of her husband, and the attentions of a psychologist, Betty’s growing desperation finally reaches its climax in an act of chilling violence. With this, her first novel, Laurali Wright, the winner of the fourth annual Search-for-a-New Alberta-Novelist Competition, has presented a searching study of the complexities of the human mind and heart ­ and of how delicate their balance really is. At the same time she has made some very basic observations about the isolation of the individual in our society. Social workers, clergymen, and doctors will recognize in Betty another “neurotic housewife” who is expected to “snap out of it.”

This is a book that will fascinate the thoughtful reader ­– anyone who has ever been troubled by the unanswered questions so often hidden behind the sensational newspaper headlines.