Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth Review: Dark, Tender, and Nothing Like I expected.

A murderer’s story, finally told, and far more human than the headlines ever let on.

Synopsis

Meet Mad Mabel.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She’s lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years–longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

When a new little girl (talkative, curious, nosy) moves into the neighborhood and stops at nothing to befriend Elsie, her carefully-constructed life threatens to come crashing down as the secrets in Elsie’s past start coming to light. Who was “Mad Mabel” fifty years ago? Who is Elsie Fitzpatrick today? And if the past has a habit of repeating itself, who has the most to lose?

Told with Sally Hepworth’s twists, humor, charm, and heart, MAD MABEL is novel that weaves past and present together–through the power of justice and redemption, and all the way to its stunning conclusion.

Audiobook review

5 stars

I went into this one completely blind : no synopsis, no blurb, nothing!  Just Sally Hepworth’s name on the cover, which at this point is all I need. Because if she writes it I will read it.

I’ll be honest: I was expecting something darker, more disturbing, closer to Darling Girls maybe? Instead the book took a sharp turn into something I wasn’t prepared for at all, and I mean that in the best possible way! What I got is a surprisingly emotional story filled with dark humor, past mistakes and a thirst for justice.

I have such a soft spot for older protagonists and Elsie , eighty-one, delightfully prickly, looking at most people like they’ve personally offended her, is an absolute gift of a character. She seems to hold the entire world in contempt, and yet… There’s this enormous heart she’s been quietly guarding for decades, and watching it surface, bit by bit, got me every time.

The story weaves between past and present to piece together how Elsie became Mad Mabel , once Australia’s youngest murderer and now living in hard-won peace on Kenny Lane. Her tranquility will be shattered once a new neighbor recognizes her. All of a sudden, people are threatening her but when the threats extend to Persephone, her young, annoyingly persistent neighbor that Elsie would never in a million years admit to caring about, she decides she’s done staying quiet. She’ll tell her story.

And what a story it is.

I usually have a preferred timeline in dual narratives, there’s almost always one I’m more impatient to get back to. Yet here I was as engrossed and moved by young Mabel as I was by old Elsie story. I confess that in the light of her loneliness and all that she went through I shed more than a few tears for Mabel and Elsie.

The childhood she endured, the isolation, the abuse from people who should have protected her, Hepworth writes it without overdoing it, which somehow makes it worse. There were moments I was genuinely furious on her behalf, and moments where I needed to take a breather.

This was an excellent exercise in portraying an isolated young girl , ostracized by a community at her father’s hand. Every time she suffered abuse be it by family, lover or acquaintances I wanted to bash some skulls and wrap her in a warm hug. How Hepworth captures loneliness, not as a single dramatic event but as something that accumulates slowly, shapes a person without them quite realizing it, was spot on.

I was also sad to see Elsie still living alone at 81 and the brunt of public’s suspicion once her old neighbor died! She didn’t deserve that life.

The writing is excellent, making me feel everything deeply, depicting a life of loneliness in subtle strokes, building the story until the big reveal and yet another shocking twist I never saw coming.

It’s dark,  tender, funny, and quietly devastating.

Last words about the narrators who brought that story to life and were perfect choices for the roles.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie