ANNA DOWNES The Safe Place. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Anna Downes’s first novel is a thriller that poses uncomfortable questions about families.
The Safe Place begins with a dreamlike escape. A young Londoner in a Ramones T-shirt and worn sneakers boards a private jet and arrives in France, where a chauffeur escorts her to a secluded luxury estate on the coast. Hidden on a forested backroad behind iron gates, the property features two mansions, an expansive garden and a central pool. Emily Proudman gazes at her surroundings in delighted disbelief.
In the style of Normal People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, the title of Anna Downes’s standout debut is antithetical. How exactly the elegant estate is unsafe provides the first driving question of this compelling psychological thriller.
A failed actor, Emily finds herself unemployed and on the verge of eviction until she receives the miraculous offer to move to France as a live-in house- and groundskeeper. There she meets her employer’s wife, Nina, and their young daughter. Nina is gracious and welcoming, but also secretive. The daughter’s unnamed health conditions keep the pair housebound. The only other person at the estate is a taciturn groundskeeper. At first, Emily is overwhelmed by her lucky break. Soon, however, suspicions about the family, and particularly the young girl’s illness, begin to trouble her.
The narrative alternates between Emily and her charismatic boss, Scott Denny, whose business keeps him in London. He maintains the façade of a successful businessman, but when we first encounter him during a meeting in his office, his covert behaviour reveals otherwise:
The fat nib of the pen was too blunt to penetrate his skin, but Scott Denny was giving it his best shot. He forced it into the centre of his palm, turning it slowly like a screw, first one way and then the other, grinding the metal against his flesh.
Downes’s characters are fully realised, and revealed with careful pacing. The motives for Scott’s ongoing self-harm, whether masochistic or traumatic, remain murky even as we learn of his efforts to manipulate Emily. His orchestrated deceptions play off her youthful naiveté and bubbling gratitude as she accepts the housekeeper role.
While the French estate is lavish, there are a few signs that there’s more to the Denny family than Scott revealed. Video cameras monitor Emily as she arrives. Nina forbids her from entering the main house. And Scott rarely comes to visit.
Scott and Nina aren’t the only ones harbouring secrets. Emily’s childhood haunts her, and strains her relationship with her adopted parents. She’s uncertain of exactly what happened to her. Slivers of early memories flash through her mind:
Her suffering is buried in her subconscious, Dr Forte was saying, it’s part of her now. Emily remembered crying that night, sobbing to Juliet that there was something wrong with her, something rotten and defective inside that made her do bad things.
Emily’s and Scott’s narratives spiral together, interspersed with brief scenes narrated by Nina. As Emily discovers the truth about the Denny family, she realises she may be unable to escape.
The tightly paced plot is offset by Downes’s engaging, confident prose. The attitude of Emily’s father is captured by ‘the disappointment that rose off him like heat from a car bonnet’. Scott’s first description of Emily comes when he spies her through the glass of his office: ‘Over in reception, a large potted fig tree wobbled as a fully-grown woman tried to wedge herself behind it.’ And when Emily flubs an audition, her internal turbulence is clear:
All the lines she’d thought were safely committed to memory had somehow evaporated, leaving only a screaming inner monologue of fear and self-doubt.
As in JP Pomare’s recent novels Call Me Evie and In the Clearing, Downes’s final twists are surprising and believable, her plot never overexplained. The Safe Place forces readers to contemplate the choices they would make in similar circumstances.
In her author’s note, Downes describes her own journey from struggling London actor to the debut author of a major international book release. After leaving both the UK and her acting aspirations, she moved to Australia with her husband and turned to writing as an escape from post-partum anxiety.
Her plot inspiration came during what she describes as the ‘early motherhood “twilight zone”, of being caught between reality and something else’, when she obsessively worried that something terrible would happen to her own children. Writing helped her return to better health.
A powerful debut, The Safe Place poses uncomfortable questions about family and the secrets we’re willing to keep for the people we love.
Anna Downes The Safe Place Affirm Press 2020 PB 384pp $32.99
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of My Name is Revenge, a finalist in the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing also appears in Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, the Australian, the Big Issue, and Kill Your Darlings. Find her at ashleykalagianblunt.com
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