#BookshelfSpotlight-‘An Isolated Incident’ by Emily Maguire

When 25-year-old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm ensues.

Unwillingly thrust into the eye of that storm are Bella’s beloved older sister, Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, whose apparently easy-going nature conceals hard-won wisdom and the kind of street-smarts that only experience can bring, and May Norman, a young reporter with high ideals sent to cover the story.

‘An Isolated Incident’ is a humane and beautifully observed tale of everyday violence, the media’s obsession with the murders of pretty young women and the absence left in the world when someone dies.

Available in Kindle Unlimited ebook and paperback editions from the Eye Books site, ‘An Isolated Incident’ is dark, profound and disturbing in its examination of inidividual, and collective responsinbility for making sense from the senseless.

In particular, the focus is on the media reporting and how quickly the small community in Strathdee has something to say about Bella and her manner of death-paradoxically ignoring the effect on older sister Chris whilst peddling rumours, assigning blame and casting ill founded suspicion.

The story is split between Chris and May, a reporter, who is throwing her everything into this story on the back of a broken relationship. Interspersed with May’s newspaper articles on Bella’s death, the gamut of society’s perception and treatment of ‘the dead girl’ trope is examined in minute detail as it alternates between the public and the private.

Chris and Bella’s upbringing was a far from easy one with 2 different fathers, alcoholism and violence playing a big part. As Chris looks internally to examine what she could have done differently,the reader is aware that she really had no other choice that to be the barmaid who took truckers to her bed, exchanging the only thing that she had(her body)for momentary warmth and financial gain. Bella, on the other hand, so many years younger than Chris was a care worker looking after the elderly and dying, on her way home from work when she was murdered. The fact that she wasn’t found until 2 days after being reported missing is seemingly a throwaway detail but hugely impacts on Chris-the idea that her sister was left cold, broken and exposed to the elements haunts her.

The endless specualtion on the manner of Bella’s death, the torture and aabuse that she endured, sometimes right under Chris’ nose in the bar is just awful, the keeness for the public to sniff this out and to offer their perspectives-‘it could have been any one of us’, ‘nowhere is safe anymore’, ‘what was she doing walking home alone,’ all murmur a refrain of victim blaming. Bella is being held as a pariah, a victim and also responsible for shattering a peace in a town that never really had any,a town that is mid-way between cities , a nothing town that now has a spotlight on it thanks to Bella beign so thoughtlessly killed.

Alternately, you have the people who seize Bella’s death for their own cause, the feminist group who contact Chris to let her know they are holding a march in Bella’s name and want her to be there. It’s really interesting, this perspective, how often these marches happen and as a casual reader of the news you think ‘Good for you!’ at articles on Take Back The Night-esque demonstrations, because yes, a woman should be safe to walk to their own home at any hour of the day or night. But on a personal level, the conversation that Chris has with the leader of the feminist group really hits hard as this is a grieving woman, barely holding herself together, and she is being asked to exploit her sister for a very worthy, yet political agenda.

Contrasted with this is the misogony of the toxic Australian male-this is a town which has looked down upon these women and done little to help them. The girl’s mother, beaten and abused by partners who then turn that abuse on Chris have been looked down upon, as Chris grows up she becomes the unwelcome recipient of the male gaze before she even realises what is going on. Her developing body is the cause of first shame, then defience then exploitation-of the men-as no matter what she does, she is seen as a conduit for masculine desire. The men who occupy her bed, mostly through happenstance rather than careful consideration, are only when she chooses to have them, following the breakdown of her marriage to Nate-a truck driver-a marriage which was broken down after Chris’ inability to support Nate’s attempts at sobriety. This marriage descnded into violence on both accounts and he left in order to make a go of being sober whilst Chris was left behind.

May, on the other hand, is smarting after finding her lover is really never leaving his wife, she is now pregnant and is throwing everything she has into this story. Her perception as a reporter and as that of a woman are very different. On the one hand she is feeding the rumour mile by cannonising Bella, on the other she is looking at her role as a woman, what she deserves, what she is settling for and how she is treated by men.

This is a very powerful,feminist story, one in which the victim of a brutal murder almost gets sidelined in her own death. As it starts with her murder, we as a reader only know Bella from the way Chris, and others eulogise and memorialise her. We have to decide for ourselves where Bella lies in all of this, but at it’s centre, this is the story of a young woman, tragically murdered,whose death causes ripples across an Australina satellite town, and what happens afterwards.

An extrardinary and beautifully wrought tale, this works on multiple levels and I am absolutely keen to read EMily Maguire’s other books once I have finished porcessing this one.