The plot is centered around Carmen and her marriage to Tom, who has a rather 'colourful' history with women. His first marriage with Laura spawned three children, but then his affair with Zena, a headstrong, independent woman brought this to an end. But his relationship with Zena was cut short after she went swimming in the sea at St Jude's beach and drowned.
Carmen is vaguely aware of Tom's history, but until a chance comment from a stranger at the train station, she had just put it all to the back of her mind. That was his past, and she didn't really want to know. Until now.
The story is set in motion after Carmen is given reason to believe that there is some question over the cause of Zena's death and she decides to launch her own investigation into the truth. (This is a no-spoilers review so I will stop there!)
First things first, I've read a few books recently with the same kind of 'wife not trusting husband' theme, for example Before We Met by Lucie Waterhouse. I have very mixed feelings about the 'genre' because although there's a kind of 'thriller' element which can be quite addictive, the feminist in me rolls my eyes because the men seem to be always portrayed as the ones with the high-powered jobs, strong and holding the power in the relationship. This may be co-incidental but in both books (Undertow and Before We Met), the women are struggling work-wise, while their husbands are making it, and seemingly because of all the extra time on their hands, the wives' entire lives are taken over by worry and anxiety about their husbands!
Deeper than that though, there were some really worrying situations which played out in Undertow which made me really uncomfortable. At a wedding of a friend of Tom's, he has too much to drink and becomes jealous when a male guest is talking with Carmen. He embarrasses her by getting angry in front of the guests and then storms off to bed, locking himself in (and Carmen out) their bedroom suite. With help from the other guests, Tom is woken to let Carmen in and is a foul drunken mess. Livid, Carmen tosses and turns all night, but Tom wakes up with sexual urges, telling her to pretend she doesn't want it (creepy?). WHY at this point does she go along with it? He is a repugnant, domineering man, who has a known history of beating up men through jealousy. I'd like to think I'd be bloody hacked off at being embarrassed in front of everybody and the prospect of some casual 3am sex after all that would be unthinkable but Carmen doesn't stand up for herself.
Nearer the end of the book, when they have a huge fight and Tom has been ignoring all Carmen's pleas for forgiveness, Tom appears in Carmen's bedroom. It's pitch black and she has no idea who is. It could be some kind of murderer for all she knows, and she is motionless with fear. Oh joy, it's a silent and creepy-as-hell Tom, who after an exchange of words then pushes himself on her, and rapes her. But it's okay because Carmen understands that he just "needs to make love". The thing is, this is never discussed or dealt with again. In fact in the days that follow, she asks herself 'why am I crying for no reason'. YOU WERE RAPED?!! Not once does she seem to realise this.
You might be able to tell, but I found Carmen quite annoying. In the dialogue between her and the other characters she kept repeating their words in a questioning tone, for example, in one discussion with Tom:
Tom: 'It was the kids'
Carmen: 'It was the kids!?'
Tom: 'Jake and Mel'
Carmen: 'Jake and Mel?'
Tom: 'Laura picked them up'
Carmen: 'Laura picked them up!?'
I just found this quite tedious an unimaginative!
Another thing that grated on me was the rather annoying cliché portrayal of the division between classes, Tom having gone to Oxford and Carmen 'never considering "that life"'. Carmen describes Tom's middle-class lot as 'dishonest' and she says they 'expect everything', which is a tedious stereotype!
Despite my gripes with this, I found that it had a few unexpected twists and turns along the way (though the overall plot was quite predicatable). I think I would have struggled with this one in book format because the annoying protagonist would have frustrated me, but my interest was kept up by the thriller element and I listened to it in just over a week.
I'm going to give this one 2.5/5. An intriguing but quite 'over done' storyline, with some aggravating elements means I just can't give a 3!
