Review: Home Truths, by Charity Norman

Livia Denby has a happy life: a fulfilling career as a probation officer and a loving family. Her husband Scott is Head of Department at the local high school, and together they have two children, Heidi and Noah. Fast forward two years, however, and Livia is on trial for attempted murder.

What went wrong? This could be the premise of almost any crime novel, but Home Truths, Ngaio Marsh Award winner Charity Norman’s eighth novel, digs deep into pertinent social issues and winds them into the story intricately so they burn scars into the characters and push everyone to the extreme.

The book begins with a quote from George Orwell’s 1984, ‘there was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.’ In the way of the best entry quotes, this sums up the work—and the question—what is the truth? How, since the advent of mass information at our fingertips, can truth be manipulated and what is hidden in the spiralling darkness of disinformation? Who are the people hiding behind computer screen encouraging and influencing others?

The events that set the story's wheels in motion happen on 13 year-old Heidi’s birthday. Heidi has asked for time with her father Scott, a bike ride and a pub visit in the picturesque North Yorkshire Moors. Over the course of these celebrations, Scott misses a call from his vulnerable brother Nicky, who tragically suffers a health crisis and dies, setting Scott on a search for answers and Heidi into a destructive course of her own.

When Scott falls into the YouTube algorithm, it's highly believable. He reaches out to conspiracy theorists, sees a grain of truth and follows, wanting to believe. He searches for answers, looking for absolution, for someone to blame, for something to take his pain away. But the path down the rabbit hole is a dark one for him and his family.

Charity Norman has a gift for intricate plotting and tense chapters that keep the story moving relentlessly toward its conclusion. Hard-boiled crime readers will find plenty to enjoy here. What is so admirable about this book, and Charity’s other novels, is that she also manages to shade the greys and shadows into her writing, highlighting the perils of today’s society in a way that is recognisable enough that it could be happening to you, or to people you know and love.

Livia, Heidi, five-year-old Noah, and tortured, grieving Scott have all the quirks and nuanced traits of real-life, ordinary folk: Livia cheers Heidi up by offering her money for ice cream; five-year old Noah is asthmatic and fragile and the rest of the family are hawk-like in their care for him; Scott turns away from sleeping pills to explore natural remedies suggested by friends who run a wellness retreat. Cake and conversation is a treat and a balm for Livia as she too struggles to cope with her brother-in-law’s death.

Home Truths was born during the pandemic. Lockdown makes an entrance, and contributes to the swirling underbelly of disinformation. Ultimately, though, this story questions what it means to have your own truth; what it means when someone close to you, someone beloved, dear, and widely well-respected believes something unwaveringly, something that is definitively wrong. Norman asks, what can be done, when that person has an undeniable role and jurisdiction in the lives of those you love most? Can you stop them from destroying what is yours as well as theirs?

So often, in crime fiction, lonely people—characters who have walked away from a previous life, becoming tortured and dark and pitting themselves against the world in the process—are cast as villains. Readers are presented with these characters ready-made, already radicalised. In Home Truths, the reader is given a full view of Scott's grinding, splintering path to isolation and radicalisation. Livia must save her family, but how can she fight when the real villain is hiding out of reach, lurking in the dark shadows of the internet?

Readers of Catherine Chidgey's Pet and Fiona Sussman's The Doctor's Wife will love the intimacy and realism of Home Truths. It's a satisfying, full read that probes the problem of disinformation in today's world in a way that is deep and thought-provoking. Reviewed by Erica Stretton