In Never Mind Miss Fox, Olivia Glazebrook’s second novel, the revelation of a long buried secret releases a Pandora’s Box of disasters. At the heart of the book is a disturbing sex scene between a 16-year-old girl and an older, soon-to-be-married man. With intelligent restraint, Glazebrook gives only a partial description of the event itself. Alcohol and the distorting effect of time and memory render the details hazy. But the ramifications of the brief affair play out with devastating consequences.
The novel turns on the lives of Clive and Martha, a successful, if slightly dull couple who, during the course of the book, marry and have a child. On one level, Never Mind Miss Fox is simply a powerful cautionary tale about marital infidelity and dishonesty. However, Glazebrook’s writing is more interesting than that. Her greatest skill is her ability to evoke sympathy for inherently unsympathetic characters.
Clive and Martha are deeply flawed and for the most part unlikable protagonists. Likewise the enigmatic Eliot Fox, who haunts their lives and is as cruel as she is vulnerable — Glazebrook is particularly good on the ambiguity of power in sexual attraction and manipulation. Clive, a prig and a hypocrite, is vividly human, his jealousy almost as unattractive as the self-deception he practises, and Martha is barely more likable. When their child Eliza is born, Martha’s resentment towards both daughter and husband is an unsettling but authentic portrait of the side of motherhood we don’t much want to examine. Shifting back and forth in time, the novel exposes the tensions in their marriage: the guilt and lies as well as the love.
As in her previous novel, The Trouble with Alice, Glazebrook observes human faults and frailty and traces them with an unflinching eye.
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