To describe ‘Imperfect Women’ as a murder mystery or a psychological thriller is to miss the heart of this novel. It is a thought-provoking and absorbing study of female friendship, forged at university and still strong decades later.
Nancy, Eleanor and Mary lead very different lives. Araminta Hall suggests that they should not have much in common, so different are their careers (or lack of), their domestic lives and their concerns. However, their emotional connection is complicated and intense, developed over many years, and they appear utterly devoted to each other. When one of them is murdered, the other two feel adrift. The death forces them both to look closely at their own behaviour, and that of the dead woman they mourn.
Hall is particularly successful at building the women’s interior lives, helped by structuring her story so that the opening third is narrated by Nancy, followed by Eleanor and, finally, Mary. All of these characters are ‘imperfect’ and all the better for being so. Whilst the reader may not recognise anyone in their life who is similar, it’s likely that we all have friends whom we love dearly, warts and all! Her use of dialogue is realistic; witty, occasionally cruel, sometimes wise and honest. The business of everyday life is mixed seamlessly into the mystery of the murder and it’s easy to picture the various different settings – from the graveyard to the bonfire party, the overheated flat to the elegant dining room.
At the end of the novel Mary muses that ‘…for maybe the first time ever, that they knew each other so completely they didn’t have to pretend they’d got it right. They didn’t have to lament the people they never became or wonder at what might have been. They understood the words each other said, and knew each other’s stories. Their strengths lay in their weaknesses…’ Wise words. Through her central characters, Hall makes the case for acknowledging the fallibilities and shortcomings of our friends and loving them nevertheless.
My thanks to NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.