The Long Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper

Synopsis
Yesterday, I kissed my husband for the last time . . .

It’s the summer of 1959, and the well-trimmed lawns of Sunnylakes, California, wilt under the sun. At some point during the long, long afternoon, Joyce Haney, wife, mother, vanishes from her home, leaving behind two terrified children and a bloodstain on the kitchen floor.

While the Haney’s neighbours get busy organising search parties, it is Ruby Wright, the family’s ‘help’, who may hold the key to this unsettling mystery. Ruby knows more about the secrets behind Sunnylakes’ starched curtains than anyone, and it isn’t long before the detective in charge of the case wants her help. But what might it cost her to get involved? In these long hot summer afternoons, simmering with lies, mistrust and prejudice, it could only take one spark for this whole ‘perfect’ world to set alight . . .

Review
1959, in the suburbs of the Santa Monica Joyce Haney disappears. With blood on the kitchen floor, and the children left on their own it is Detective Mick Blanke whose job it is to find out what happened. As he looks into the lives of Joyce and her friends the seemingly perfect of suburb Sunnylake starts to show cracks in its shiny veneer, with secrets and lies hidden behind the doors of the perfect houses. Part historical fiction, part crime thriller The Long Long Afternoon looks at the American Dream and the constraints put on women at that time.

The Long Long Afternoon is one of the most anticipated debuts of 2021 and it really lives up to the hype. The book is written from the point of view of Joyce, the woman who goes missing, Ruby her help and Mick the detective in charge of finding out what happened. These three very different charaters highlight prejudices in race, sex and the discrimination of coming from elsewhere. We know from the start of the book that Joyce has gone missing, the children found abandoned and blood on the floor. Inga Vesper has Joyce speaking in the first person, leading up to the events of that last afternoon. These chapters were absolutley compelling, building slowly as to what happened whilst learing more about her relationships and state of mind. As the book progressed, and I learned more about Joyce I had empathy for her situation, with her troubled childhood and trying to be the perfect wife and mother. Inga Vesper really gets into the psyche of her characters, their very different situations that makes them likeable and personable. Ruby is at the opposite scale to Joyce, she is the help from the other side of Santa Monica where she lives with her father and sister. This was still a time of racial discrimination and segregation, and just because of her skin colour she is arrested for Joyce’s murder just because she is the first person at the scene. Ruby was the character I liked best, she wanted better for herself, to go to college and study the sciences, to have a better life than her dead mother and father. Her job as a help in Sunninglake is purely for money to go towards her college fund, so she has to keep her head down even when she is treated badly, which she is; she is looked down on and in one case is told not to touch the children, probably incase she taints them. Ruby’s intelligence and insight into the lives of these privilage people is used by Mick to help solve the case. Mick comes from New York and treats Ruby woth more respect than the Sunnylake women, he befriends her toa certain extent and is the one to get her released from jail. Strangely Mick also faces prejudice at work, he has come to California from New York after a case he worked on went wrong, he is seen as an interloper, and an unwelome one at that. His experience in the job though shows the incompetence and racism in the police department, and although some of his own practices can be seen as unethical, they are for the right reasons.

Inga Vesper’s writing is beautiful, chatching the individual voices of the characters, the atmosphere and zeitgeist of the period, and building the tension as to what happened to Joyce. Reading about Sunnylake made me think of the Stepford Wives, these perfect women, being perfect wives and mothers, whilst going to the Women’s Improvement Society. However, underneath this shiny veneer are a bunch of woman who are struggling in their lives, whose husbands can take them to a doctor to get pills to make then happy and pills so that they can perform their congical rights; no notice was taken as to why these women were feeling that way, it didn’t matter. The aim of women was to be a wife, a mother and to attend church and that’s it. I had to laugh at one of the meetings of the Women’s Improvement Society where they had a guest speaker spoke about the correct way to organise the kitchen in a way that made it more efficient so that they could spend more time with the children. There is obviously the racial inequality of this book, Ruby being arrested for her skin colour and her treatment at the hands of the women she cleans for. Her dreams of college are also put down by her father and her boyfriend Joseph, they feel she is getting high ideas not appropraite for her backgroung. It is worth noting though that some of these prejudices are just because she is female, noting that the police have no female officers. Through all this Inga Vesper keeps the underlying suspense of the police investigation, the tensions are mirrored by the simmering heat of the California summer.

I loved The Long Long Afternoon with its underlying tension, intriguing characters and compelling plot line. Inga Vesper writing captures he atmosphere and zeitgeist of this period, with its racial tensions, sexism and the so called American Dream. This is an impressive debut, that had me enthralled from start to finish, I read it in two settings and literally didn’t want to put it down. An intoxicating and capticating read that I highly recommend.

Id like to thank Bonnier Books and Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the invite on the blog tour in return for my honest review.