First time novelist Karen Harrington's JANEOLOGY is a reading experience so thoughtfully conceived and written that accepting the fact that this is a first novel flirts with disbelief. Not only is Harrington a masterful conjurer of a suspenseful thriller, but she is also a wordsmith able to maintain the reader's attention and involvement in her masterful exploration of the science of psychology, genetics, and the fascination with the concept of retrocognition, all the while unraveling a mystery not unlike decoding a strand of DNA. If, indeed, this is a first novel, then we are in the presence of a gifted artist with a bright and solid future.
In a Prologue, Harrington sets the stage for the drama that will unfold in the course of her novel, just as in the Epilogue she manages to tie her tale together in as surprising a fashion as the method in which she relates her story. Jane Nelson is jailed for the drowning murder of her young son Simon and the attempted drowning of Simon's twin sister Sarah. What lead to this horrid act is the theme of the story. That, and the fact that Jane's husband Tom is implicated for not recognizing the mental deterioration and signs of behavior alteration that, had he been more mentally and physically present in the family, could have prevented the tragedy. Tom is supported by his friend and lawyer Dave who is hired to defend Tom in the charges of child endangerment and neglect. Dave, Tom, and 'spiritualist/agent of retrocognition skills' Mariah slowly unravel the events that served as signals to Jane's ability to murder her children. This investigation is done through visits to Jane's past - startling discoveries of familial traits of mental instability as well as repeated incidents of abuse and desertion and brutally faulty mothering and interfamily secrets - that give rise to the question of whether Jane's illness is genetically determined or the product of cruel, inappropriate nurturing.
Throughout these sessions before Tom's trial as a 'co-conspirator' we find Tom's initial love for Jane, his life with her and his twins, and the history of episodes involving Tom and Jane that could have prompted Tom to see Jane for the complete person she is rather than the perception of a wife as he elected to see her with blinders in place. 'The mask of self-control is a powerful antidote to the chaos that rages within us all.' In reflecting on Jane's torrid familial history Mariah states 'Children aren't born practical...Life makes them that way when they are forced to constantly make the best of every situation.' But Harrington's revisiting Jane's genealogy is peppered with many keenly observed ideas: '...time plus tragedy always equal comedy.' and '...pre-death purgatory may look like for the modern man, a place where you are forced to shore up the rationales for your behavior, a waiting room where you must sort out the misdeeds of your mother.' and 'Drugs are often the substitute for multiple generations of parenting support.' and 'I've heard that your mind runs its own tapes, tapes you play over and over again until you banish them through therapy, drugs or religion, or all of those things at once, until you replace them with new thoughts you can live with.'
Tom, in preparing for his trial while Jane is held in custody in jail, absorbs all of the 'ancestral time travel' consequences he has witnessed with Dave and Mariah. '...we three had begun this odyssey looking for traits foretelling danger and we had found them. We found evidence that supported how Jane could have been the inheritor of characteristics that perhaps predisposed her to a personality ill-suited for parenting, its mounting pressures and the daily treadmill of maternal monotony.' And the trial for Tom Nelson pulls all these threads together in a manner that leaves much of the verdict to the reader.
Karen Harrington is such an accomplished writer that it seemed to this reader more important to offer a few pearls of her gift with words and ideas than with a direct recounting of the story within the covers of this strange puzzle of a tale. And that is not to say the story is not revealed with expertise and brilliance: few new writers have the kind of skill Harrington owns in creating a wholly satisfying reading experience. This is a fine book, a unique book, and a book that makes us plead for another by Karen Harrington. Grady Harp, May 08
