Whistle in the Dark – Review

Whistle in the Dark, by Emma Healey

'Whistle in the Dark' is hinged on a missing-person mystery. In chapter one, fifteen-year-old Lana is found after having gone missing for four days in the remote countryside. Lana claims not to be able to remember anything of her time missing, yet things have changed about her since her return. Officially, it's the end of the case. But the impact of the ordeal on Lana's family is only just beginning, and Lana's mother Jen is convinced there is more to be discovered about what happened during those four fateful days.

So it's a mystery. But I don't think it actually is. On the surface, yes, it's an unsolved case with missing answers. But in reality I think Healey was using this scenario and this genre as a prism through which to explore her themes. Themes like teenage mental health, and family love, and the conflict between hope and despair. Those are what this book is really about, and the mystery is a vehicle for communicating those things, a stage on which to spotlight the real message.

This book isn't really about Lana either. It's about her mother. The whole book was from Jen's perspective, and Healey didn't once move away from this. This was actually pretty striking. In my experience, even books that have one prevailing perspective will often broaden out to an omniscient narrator, or switch to another character's viewpoint, or present a parallel scene happening in a different place. And this is the kind of book where all those techniques might have been quite effective. It might have been very insightful for Healey to show us the way each of Lana's family members reacted differently, for example, and it might have been interesting to have interspersed some of Lana's memories and feelings. This is what I expected.

But instead, Healey gave us one story. Jen's story. And although we were able to see the family's different reactions through Jen's eyes, Healey never let us into their heads. And the only clues we were able to discover about Lana's feelings and memories were the ones that Jen uncovered; Lana herself remained closed and evasive, Healey hiding her from us.

What this meant was that we got a very intimate, realistic, personal, emotional story. As readers we lived the whole experience as Jen, only knowing what Jen knew, only feeling what Jen felt. This singular perspective gave us a sense of just how isolating, entrapping, frustrating a situation like this can be. It was far more stirring and moving to have this story presented through the eyes of one woman than to have changing perspectives. A really effective choice from Healey.

Overall, as you might have gathered, this book was definitely not a light read. It was deep and it was dark, and it was poignant and sad and haunting and unsettling. But it managed to be page-turningly enthralling all the way through, and Healey even managed to imbue it with humour, character and wit. It was a good book, and although it was not always the most pleasant read (it wasn't supposed to be!) I do rate it very highly.