Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Mar
20
Book Review: Safer by Sean Doolittle
2009 at 12pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Recently published February 2009 by Random House
On the evening of December 16th, Paul Callaway and his wife Sara are hosting a faculty party at their home in the Ponca Heights neighborhood of Clark Falls, Iowa. Clark Falls is a quiet college town, and Ponca Heights is widely considered to be one of its nicest, safest neighborhoods. When the Callaways’ doorbell rings at9:25 pm, no one expects to see members of the Clark Falls Police Department waiting on the other side. Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding, they think. Maybe the music is too loud. Maybe they’re just dropping by to say hi.
But no, the police have come to arrest Paul Callaway for “suspicion of the sexual exploitation of a minor.” The Callaways’ 13-year-old neighbor Brit Seward, who spends a lot of her free time hanging out in their reading room and talking to Paul (an English professor) about books, has accused him of, well, he doesn’t really know yet. But it can’t be good.
Sean Doolittle’s newest novel Safer follows Paul as he struggles to prove his innocence and, in the process, discovers that many of his seemingly wholesome suburban neighbors are keeping nasty secrets of their own. “Suburbetrators,” he calls them in one chapter heading.
According to Paul, the trouble began when he had a falling out with Roger Mallory, a retired cop who organizes the neighborhood patrol and runs the Safer Places program to educate citizens about keeping their neighborhoods safe. A few months prior, Paul found one of his torn-up credit card statements taped back together and stored in Roger’s home office. This, combined with additional discoveries, prompted Paul to accuse Roger of spying on him and Sara and the rest of the neighbors. Paul knew it sounded crazy, and Roger had clout with the police, and nothing came of it. But Paul never forgot. He is sure that Roger Mallory is the mastermind (and master manipulator) behind his arrest.
As Safer progresses through the four days following Paul’s arrest, we learn that all of those cliches about the suburbs—that you never know what people do behind closed doors; that things are not always as they appear; that no family is perfect—really are true. As Paul’s friend Charlie puts it, quoting Jane Austen, “Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies,” and everyone has secrets. Still, Paul knows that his lawyer and his wife and, certainly, his neighbors, are likely to doubt that what he tells them could be true.
Paul’s attempts to prove his innocence and explain his seemingly crazy theories are complicated by the fact that he’s keeping a few secrets of his own. His internal struggles and his willingness to reveal and admit that he is far from perfect make him a more sympathetic, believable protagonist. His professorial grasp of storytelling and literary devices make him a great narrator—the story is suspenseful, well-paced, and has just the right number of surprises. He avoids trickery and doesn’t try to lead us down the wrong road. This is not so much about who did it as it is about how they did it. And why.
The thing that makes Safer so frightening is that it seems so possible, so realistic. When Paul makes an ill-advised attempt to talk to Brit Seward’s best friend, he discovers that:
If I were the kind of person I’m accused of being, it wouldn’t be difficult to get close to this kid. I could be even worse than the kind of person I’m accused of being.
And there it is, Doolittle is telling us. Life in the suburbs appears to be peaceful and safe, but you never know what lurks beneath the shiny veneer of happiness. Safer reads like an even darker, more twisted version of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children, and I found it hard to put down. 4 out of 5.
Related posts:
[...] Book Review: Safer by Sean Doolittle [...]
That sounds deliciously creepy.
This is going on my wish list. I have a fatal weakness for these dark-heart-of-suburbia stories (probably because part of me actually BELIEVES in it). Thanks for the review!
Like Florinda, I too think ‘burbs are kinda sinister, which is why I live in a 60 year old house in the center of town!
This is going on my wish list.
When I first saw this cover, it reminded me a lot of the cover for The Unknown Terrorist. The covers are not alike in color but they both have the same feel.
http://www.amazon.com/Terrorist-Novel-Richard-Flanagan/dp/0802118518
As I was reading your review, I was thinking how easily this could happen in today’s society. We just don’t know what goes on behind closed doors and people are not all that open about it either.
This one sounds like it would make a good movie adaptation.
It occurred to me daily how easy it would be for any one of my students to ruin the life of any of their teachers if we pissed them off, and all they had to do was tell this lie. And we had a few who would’ve done it, if you’d said the wrong thing on the wrong day. Nothing scared me more than that.
I mean, good grief, the principal totally believed the student who said I had a second job as a stripper. A stripper! Me! (Do you know how long it took for me to get even kind of naked in front of another person?)
Added this one to my reading list; now that I’m not a teacher anymore, this shouldn’t keep me up at night.
[...] Book Review: Safer by Sean Doolittle [...]
This sounds amazing, I love stories that probe beneath the shiny veneer of the suburbs, and I really enjoyed Little Children so the comparison makes this even more intriguing.
[...] Blog (Her Last Death)81. The Book Lady’s Blog (Captain Freedom & Giveaway)82. The Book Lady’s Blog (Safer)83. Just One More Book! Children’s Book Podcast (Michael Rosen’s Sad Book)84. [...]
[...] Reviewed Supergirls Speak Out The Purity Myth My Little Red Book Safer Captain [...]