Away From You
by Melanie Finn
Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2006, Women's Prize Longlist 2005
Date Read: July 15, 2022
Ellie left her roots in Africa and never looked back. That is, until her father dies and she is summoned to settle his estate. An abusive alcoholic, Helen, Ellie’s mother, had no choice but to leave John to keep Ellie and herself safe. But the emotional scars are still there for anyone to not see. They don’t see because Ellie never lets anyone close enough to see.
When she arrives in Nairobi, the memories come flooding back to her of her childhood growing up in a volatile Africa, on the cusp of independence but still very much living the colonial reality the British would, obviously, like to maintain. Even for those cherished by their families, the racism between whites and blacks runs rampant and was often shocking to read.
In addition to settling her father’s estate, Ellie is determined to get to the bottom of a murder she has long-suspected her father had committed. He was known to be violent. He smuggled millions of dollars out of the country. Why not murder? Ellie remembers the day Eleanor, the Cameron’s neighbors and dear friends was found in her bathroom, hanging from her dressing gown belt. As one of the first people to discover the body, their house servant Baptist explained that Ellie’s father had murdered her. Ellie stole the suicide note and buried it in the backyard in her treasure box. She never actually read it.
Julius Mwangi, a man Ellie meets on the plane during her return to Nairobi, is an African attorney. After determining to find out what really happened with Mrs. McMullen, a woman her father was having an affair with, she consults Julius about the murder. Ellie, concerned about the corruption that likely took place to shield her father from consequences, poses this to Julian. Julian keeps it real and schools her by saying, “Still the same stories again and again about old murders, rich whites killing each other, drinking too much, screwing their friends’ wives. My God, who cares? … As for corruption, corruption is when thousands of people starve to death because some politician has stolen their land or their grain.” Through this lens, the murder of a white woman over 20 years ago loses its significance.
I don’t understand why, at the last minute, Ellie turns around and decides to investigate Eleanor’s murder. After 25 years, there seem to be few clues and she ultimately comes up empty-handed. Maybe she actually wanted to exonerate her father? Prove he was as evil as she believes him to be? Who knows?
I felt that Ellie’s character in particular was not fully developed. I never felt like we got to see behind the façade she has put up as self-preservation. Or perhaps this was an intentional device of Finn for the reader to suffer the exact same frustration as everyone else in Ellie’s life? If that was indeed intentionally done, then props to Finn.
The other point I am unsure Finn was trying to make is that no one person is all good or all bad. At the end, I felt it was unlikely that John actually committed murder. Was he a saint? Absolutely not. But he obviously cared about his family and tried multiple times to overcome his disease but was simply unable. This is the hardest thing to accept about those who have hurt us. It’s easier if you can put them in the black and white “monster” category but that’s not true. It will never be true regardless of how much we want it to be.
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