All Around the Town
(Contains spoilers)
This is the first novel by Mary Higgins Clark that I’ve read. I have two of her books, and All Around the Town was a purchase from my recent summer trip in Kuopio. All Around the town is a psychological thriller and mystery themed novel from 1992. In 2002, movie adaptation of the same name was released, and I don’t usually find these adaptations of the books that I read to be intriguing, but this one I’m eager to watch. Higgins Clark unfortunately passed away in last January. She was highly valued and known suspense, mystery and psychological thriller author. All Around the Town is my first Higgins Clark novel and definitely not the last one.
All Around the Town is based on 1970’s Ridgewood, New Jersey, where the family of Kenyon lives. John and Mary Kenyon have two daughters, Sarah and Laurie, Laurie being only four years old at the time. Due to her age, Laurie can easily be considered to be her parents light and joy. One day Laurie goes outside near to the road to look at the funeral procession going by. Out of nowhere, a car approaches and a husband-wive duo picks up Laurie and puts her between them in the front seat. Laurie then spends two years in a cottage in countryside with her kidnappers, and is physically, mentally and sexually abused by them. After two years, Laurie being six years old, they leave her in front of a school to police to find. When Laurie returns home, her family notices that she behaves very different from what she used to — she likes to sit in a corner of a room where she can spot everybody from, she’s scared of her own father, and is especially frighten when it’s time to go to sleep. After a while she changes back to normal, but doesn’t receive any psychological help to get her to overcame the traumatic experiences that she had to face. Eventually, being in her twenties, the stress of her parents death, brings up the mental symptoms back. Laurie begins to write steamy love letters to her collage teacher, Allan Grant, without having any knowledge of doing so. Grant gets murdered in his own home and Laurie becomes the main suspect of it. Sarah, being a lawyer, begins to defend her sister against the allegation and gets her to go and talk to a therapist about her problems.
I’ve read before (and this book informed me with the same facts) that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is usually caused by childhood trauma, and especially continued sexual abuse. Child’s psyche isn’t developed enough to deal with these kinds of traumatic experiences, and is the reason why their identity multiplies in order to protect themselves — Laurie said that whenever Bic forced her to come to bed with him, she simply floated away. That’s why later Laurie, in her safe home environment, didn’t need the support from her other identities. As Donnelly stated, Kate was Laurie’s natural instinct for self-defense, Leona brought out her feminine desires that she had suppressed, Debbie was the scared child in her who’s only wish was to get back home, and Lee protected Laurie from the memories of the childhood traumas. Leona was also the identity who showed a lot of self-destructive behaviors. She was the quilt in Laurie that made her believe that the kidnapping, everything after that, and her parents accident was her fault. It’s so sad that especially sexual assault victims (survivors) deal with these kinds of thoughts, and I think that it’s a form of internalized victim-blaming ideology that society has forced on us. Fortunately many movements nowadays, such as feminism, help to destroy these disgusting and completely incorrect statements about accountability and blame.
The story had various religious aspects to it, which made it more interesting to me. Sarah and Laurie’s parents had religious reasoning behind the refusal of Laurie’s therapy. They refused to believe that there were the possibility that Laurie had been sexually assaulted, even when the medical professionals advocated so. Mary told herself that Laurie had been just kidnapped by a lovely couple who were unable to have children of their own. The kidnappers Bic and Opal, or as they are later known as pastor Bobby and Carla Hawkins, called Laurie (Lee) a temptation that God has designated to them. They felt a great connection and trust towards God, and performed preaching and spiritual practices even before Bobby became a pastor. Pastor Hawkins was chosen to host Sunday morning’s service on TV, and from Thomasina Perkins’ description of the show, it felt very cult-like to me — “hypnotizing”, “convincing”, “can’t take eyes off of them”. They used her strong faith against her and manipulated and distracted her from recognizing them. They took advantage of their roles as “messengers of God”, and abused the trust of others for simply their own benefit. It really portrayed some of the characters’ herd mentality, where they just blindly followed and agreed with the religious authority. Carla herself submitted completely to her husband and didn’t have any say on the matter of decisions. She was also trapped.
I would’ve wanted more backstory to the “future rock stars” Bic and Opal. How did they end up in the music business? Why did they kidnap Laurie? Were they always religious or did they become religious after time? In my opinion, they were, besides Laurie, the most interesting characters in the book. I would like to know how they were raised, where they lived, and how they met each other. Laurie, however, is interesting character due to DID that she deals with. I’ve always been fascinated by the human mind and how creative it’s in problem solving and when protecting themselves. My minor in university was psychology, and clinical psychology, which included mental disorders, was my absolute favorite subject. It’s human nature to be curious and to try to resolve the questions of existence, life and death. Through faith, many get the feeling of security, purposefulness, and fellowship. Religions also define acceptable social behaviors and contracts. The behavior of Laurie, Thomasina, Carla, and Bobby can all be explained (not excused) through mental processes.
My final verdict of the book is that I really liked it. It contained some of the most interesting characters that I’ve read about recently (or maybe ever). It got me wondering about the backstories and future lives of the characters more than most books do. The plot was unique, exiting, and kept me interested until the end. Definitely one of those books that you can’t put down once you start reading it!
5/5
