The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey

Right from the first sentence you get a sense of what The List of Suspicious Things is about and the tone it is going to adopt; there's an element of childhood reminiscence of what it was like to live in a northern Yorkshire town in the late 70s/early 80s with a little nostalgia for more innocent times without overlooking the hardships endured in the Thatcher years. That view is expanded to take in the dangers faced by women in those times and the more openly racist attitudes expressed, but you also get a sense that it's not going to be all grim, that there is an affectionate look at the peculiarities of growing up with friends and family from a bookish young girl who hasn't quite grasped why things are the way they are.

What is key of course is the way the story is told, and this one has a nice little macabre twist. Horrified by the snippets of news that she hears, Miv decides that she is going to find out who is the Yorkshire Ripper with the assistance of her friend Sharon. Inspired by Enid Blyton's Famous Five (what young book reader wasn't?) Miv is going to compile a list of suspects on a notepad just bought from the corner shop, the main suspects being those “not from around our way”. The first name to go into it is indeed Mr Bashir, the cornershop owner and father of their schoolfriend Ishtiaq. The more she observes, the more she finds that there are a lot of other adults whose behaviour is suspicious to a young girl, but that doesn't necessarily make them the Yorkshire Ripper.

What Miv and Sharon really discover in their investigation is actually how other people live with a great deal of personal challenges during these times, how difficult it is for a Pakistani family in a town that is mistrustful of outsiders, how other factors can explain why people are angry and why they behave the way they do. The List of Suspicious Things however isn't just a coming of age story of the brutal awakening of an innocent childhood becoming aware of the challenges of being an adult and looking for reassuring answers to troubling questions. The late 70s/early 80s also see a kind of coming of age of a country under the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, where the fault-lines in society were being exposed and exploited by some. All of this provides a good realistic background, and prevents the novel from being merely a nostalgic period snapshot of a significant period, although it has that quality as well.

The coming of age is inevitably a painful one for both Miv, the people of Yorkshire and for English society in general. The problems of older ingrained social attitudes towards toward immigrants and women are still very evident in the lives of the people Sharon and Miv "investigate", but they are even closer to home than that. Even if she is not wholly aware of what she is really investigating, Miv's list manages to record all manner of suspicious behaviour in adults, and see how the worst of their actions are covered up or not spoken about. The List of Suspicious Things identifies this conspiracy of silence that exists in English communities around this time, an attitude that still persists to a large extent. Mind your own business, don't interfere. Miv however knows this is wrong and is prepared to do something about it, as scary as her discoveries might be.

Miv stumbles across a few too many dangers within a relatively short period covered in the book, which makes it look like she is lucky to get through childhood to adulthood in one piece, but none of the situations that she uncovers is in any way unrealistic. I think we can all consider ourselves lucky if we didn't have to deal with at least one of the problems that Miv stumbles upon here. What lifts the story above that, and what perhaps would see many of us through those times (not just late 70s, but through childhood) is Miv's discovery that her list is also a way of holding onto something tangible, a way of forging a meaningful connection with a friend who she is worried will slip away, as well as find stability within her own family. Jennie Godfrey's wonderful writing subtly brings out then how friendship and family are the cornerstones of society, and supports the belief that when good people come together, it may be possible to change things for the better.

Reading notes: The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey is published by Penguin Random House UK. The publisher provided an advance copy for review through NetGalley.