The Lies That Bind

Secrets and maternal abuse are passed on from one generation to the next in Ritchie’s historical novel.

Unwed mother Grace Smith abandons her infant daughter, Joyce; spirals out of control; receives a diagnosis of schizophrenia; and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. Joyce’s Aunt Addy and her husband, Richard, unable to have their own child, raise the infant. Life goes well for the little family until Joyce reaches puberty and Richard takes unholy notice of his ward’s changing body, forcing her into sexual relations. When Addy finds out, she arranges for a lethal accident to befall Richard in his workshop. She gets away with the crime, but Joyce still takes off to a new town, where she works at a tailor shop until she is raped by the owner. Not thwarted by the resulting pregnancy, she quickly sleeps with a wealthy closeted bisexual widower named Royston, who marries her. Everyone—possibly even Royston—thinks the child (a boy named Teddy) is his. For a few years, the three of them—and Royston’s lover, Sam—share a home and a nice life. Then the two men decide that Teddy needs a sibling, so Royston and Joyce sleep together again, and she becomes pregnant with Vivien. Grace, Addy, and Joyce all have emotional scars and mental health issues, and Vivien follows suit. Her familiar territory is anger and rage; she is cruel to her own daughter, Rosemary, another out-of-wedlock child conceived to compel a man into marriage. This well-written, character-driven novel features headstrong, independent, interesting, damaged women, such as Joyce, who carries herself with “a confidence that had burst out of sheer demand in wanting more for herself,” and Vivien, who “knew how to balance her own disappointment with her responsibilities, play-act respect, and keep secrets.” The narrative does, however, grow repetitive as the women of each generation get pregnant while unmarried and become erratic and unhappy in the situations in which they find themselves. Still, they all inspire the reader’s sympathy and admiration.

A sometimes-spicy, often sorrowful, always-entertaining family saga.