The People Before: A gripping, twisty suspenseful psychological thriller for 2023 that will keep you up all night!

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Re-read the last ten lines of part 2. Why does the son think his father might have said or felt something else? I read through the night to finish this thriller… Spooky, tense, richly atmospheric and profoundly moving’ ERIN KELLY Shadbolt’s story is rooted in the colonial history of New Zealand and its wide sweep considers attitudes to land, family relationships and memory. The central encounter between the Pakeha (white New Zealander of European descent) and the Maori is an ironic reversal of the original colonial encounter. Greenstone Isolated, dilapidated, decaying, their new home is so much more than a doer upper. Narrated by Jess you feel that the move was very much her husband’s decision and she just went along with it. However she wants the idyllic life in the countryside to become a reality for their two children. Whilst I can’t say I warmed to any of the characters, North also does a reasonable job of making their (often very poor) life choices understandable. That said, the characters were – for me – the element of the book that I struggled most with. Although clearly traumatised and isolated, I found Jess to be a rather neurotic and self-absorbed narrator and, as such, couldn’t really bring myself to care about her difficulties fitting into her new home. Whilst I totally understand that good domestic suspense relies upon certain tropes, I also felt that the characters occasionally devolved into clichés: the neurotic suburban mother, the secretive husband, the creepy neighbour, the ‘so-nice-she’s-suspicious’ friend, the ‘unfriendly-villagers-who-hate-outsiders’ etc. As the novel progressed, I did find myself wanting Jess to act on her misgivings about her new life and make a better one for herself and her children but, without giving away any major spoilers for the ending, this never really comes to fruition which I found a little disappointing.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment’s mandate of equal protection of the laws of the U.S. Constitution to any person within its jurisdiction. Oliver Brown, the lead plaintiff in the case, was one of almost 200 people from five different states who had joined related NAACP cases brought before the Supreme Court since 1938. Born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenage mother, Winfrey got her start in television news before taking over a morning talk show in Chicago in 1984. Two years later, she launched her own nationally syndicated talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which would go on to become the highest rated in TV history. Celebrated for her ability to talk candidly about a wide range of issues, Winfrey spun her talk show success into a one-woman empire—including acting, film and television production and publishing. The ending feels rather unsatisfactory - the bit where everyone is supposed to get their just deserts does not quite pan out. I'm undecided whether that is a strength or a weakness. The narrator’s father most likely belongs to a tradition of men who do not believe that their wives are their equal. It’s not that that they might not love their wives but at no stage are they ever treated as being equals. If anything there appears to be a gender imbalance between the narrator’s father and his mother. Something again which would have been common place at the time the story was set. The narrator’s mother spends the majority of her time in the house while it is left to the men to milk the cows and work the land. Despite any gender imbalance that might exist the narrator’s mother is still happy to live and work on the farm. She believes her place is beside her husband regardless of the fact that he may not necessarily treat her as she should be treated. It is also interesting that Jim never sees any sense of imbalance between his parents. He is just happy to spend time with his mother. Something that is easier than working the land with his father. This book is written brilliantly, hooking the reader in to experience the emotions along with the characters.

Maple House was once grand but now this Arts and Crafts house lies neglected and in need of serious modernisation. It is what we might call “a project”. From early on we know Jess is hiding something. Peter’s behaviour is erratic so it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn he has secrets of his own. With two such nervy characters it doesn’t take long before this seemingly idyllic rural home takes on a life of its own. Soon Eve is at Maple House where she has lots of ideas about what could be done to restore it to its former grandeur. But not everyone in Suffolk is welcoming. The locals know a secret about the Maple House, and soon, Jess realises they’ve made a huge mistake. The boys go to the Second World War. The father sells the farm and moves closer to the cities. The boys return after war and Jim leaves for the University while the older boy joins his father on their new farm. Once during a discussion about coping with war, the elder brother says he had no happy memories to focus on during war. But Jim says, for him, their old farm was Te Wahiokoahoki, the place of happy return. The brother feels jealous that he could never feel that way.

Maurice Shadbolt is a well known New Zealand writer whose works are popular with readers even today. His stories are all based in New Zealand and seek to interpret the various influences that have gone into the making of the country. The conflict between the Europeans and the Maori find frequent resonance in his works. In desperate need of a new start, Jess and her husband Pete buy a decrepit old house in the countryside, to renovate and turn into a family home. But not everyone in the area is pleased to see them move in, and Jess gets the feeling that something bad happened in the house – that someone is watching them. After a break in their London home, Jess no longer feels safe. When Pete suggests moving to the countryside, it seems like the best option for the family and their two young children. But, after viewing the Maple House, out in rural Suffolk, in the middle of summer and being captivated by its charm, it suddenly looks and feels menacing and disturbingly remote when the family arrive in the autumn on moving day.This should be a twisty psychological thriller. Sadly, the title rather gives the game away. There is some tension right at the end, and the intrigue of how it al fits together, but the big reveal at the half way point will not surprise anyone. The characters were excellent. With the way it was written you just weren't sure who to trust and whether what you were reading was as straightforward as it made out. I loved that we had the two viewpoints so we we I have given it three stars, only because I didn't like Jess very much. If I'd felt more for the main character it would have been four stars. I would happily look for more novels by this author and would recommend the read as something twisty and atmospheric. It’s not made clear just why they have left their Walthamstow home but as time goes on it’s clear that all is not well in Jess and Pete’s relationship. That feeling only gets worse when Pete resumes commuting to London and Jess, who gave up her own job to move into their new home, is feeling lonely and neglected.

The People Before starts strongly with Jess and her husband Pete and their two young children wondering quite what they have done. They’ve left bustling, multi-cultural Walthamstow for a new life and have bought a draughty run-down pile in the Suffolk countryside which is need of serious renovation. The People Before tells the story of Jess and Peter, a couple from London desperate to be seen as doing the right thing, and their move to the country. They’d always been happy in London, until the break-in that has left Jess and her daughter scared. The move to Maple House in rural Suffolk seems like the answer to their prayers. So she is hugely relieved when she meets Eve, who works in a local gallery and Eve is warm and friendly towards her. The two women discover they have interests in common and Jess enjoys going for a coffee with her new friend.Beyond that, we need to rebuild a fighting left that turns anger onto the real culprits of class rule – the bankers, vulture funds and capitalists who squeeze us while encouraging fear and division. All of this makes for an increasingly disturbing first half of the book, as the atmosphere gets more intense and Jess begins to feel she is going off the rails. The reader is drawn into her perspective and as things get more bizarre and creepy there is the realisation that it is not going to end well. Far from any equivalence, it has been organisations like People Before Profit who have warned against and confronted the poison of the far right. Whilst there weren’t really any surprises in The People Before, therefore, it is a well-constructed thriller, especially in terms of pace and atmosphere. Charlotte Northedge has done an excellent job of developing tension in the novel’s opening act, ratcheting that up in the mid-section as we realise the extent of the danger that Jess and her family are in, and then releasing it all in an explosive final act. Whilst I personally felt that there were a few too many skeletons in Jess and Pete’s family closet – and that this sometimes detracted from the mystery about ‘the people before’ – North also does an excellent job of tying up the various interwoven strands of the plot by the novel’s end. On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Scott v. Sanford, delivering a resounding victory to southern supporters of slavery and arousing the ire of northern abolitionists. During the 1830s, the owner of an enslaved man named Dred Scott had taken him from the slave state of Missouri to the Wisconsin territory and Illinois, where slavery was outlawed, according to the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Pete’s ideas for renovation are overwhelming, and now that Jess has given up her own job working in a gallery in London, she finds herself on her own in the house a lot, failing to connect with the school mums, and losing her connection with Pete at the same time. And then she meets Eve… and the history of the house starts to unravel. The initial atmosphere of the book felt unnecessarily exaggerated. As we learn more about each of the characters it was clear that the reality of the problems were more character driven. By the time we were told exactly what was happening and why, I found myself quite disengaged. Everything felt simply too much. Around the same time, the mechanization of spinning and weaving had revolutionized the textile industry in England, and the demand for American cotton soon became insatiable. Production was limited, however, by the laborious process of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers, which had to be completed by hand.So I did find this very slow going and quite tedious. It also didn’t help that the characters were not very likeable Jess came across as self-absorbed and fixated on how everything affected her whilst her husband Pete was largely bland uninterested and absent both physically and emotionally. I didn’t feel much of a connection with anyone and because of my growing apathy, I wasn’t even that bothered about anyone’s well-being or even the eventual conclusion which if I’m honest was a tad ridiculous. Governor George Wallace was a leading foe of desegregation, and Birmingham had one of the strongest and most violent chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Birmingham had become a leading focus of the civil rights movement by the spring of 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there while leading supporters of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in a nonviolent campaign of demonstrations against segregation.