The Girlfriend

In this stirring but unwieldy novel, Naughton (Tattletale) introduces two women intent on avoiding and covering up traumatic moments from their pasts. Mags takes time off from her corporate job in Las Vegas to visit her long-estranged brother, Abe, in London. When she arrives, she learns that Abe is in a coma after a fall down stairs. Immediately, she begins to suspect that the fall was not suicidal (as the police believe) but that his girlfriend, Jody, may be to blame. Naughton alternates chapters between Jody, Mags, and Mira, a neighbor of Abe’s. While readers will delight in Mags’s nuanced struggle with her emotions regarding her brother and her suspicions of Jody, many sections are clichéd, such as those from the perspective of Mira, who knows more than she’s saying. Sections told in third person are scattered throughout the book, amplifying the cat-and-mouse feel of Mags’ investigations and muddying the water of what really happened by creating an undercurrent of unreliability. Although the investigation into Abe’s fall drives the narrative, the nature of Mags and Abe’s past falling-out is a subject of intrigue. Naughton’s narrative asks intriguing questions about overcoming past traumas and the desire for revenge, but the twists that come with the answers never quite satisfy. (Mar.)