Samantha M. Bailey’s Watch Out for Her: Thrillers and Canada Reads

Until this week, a thriller had never made the short list for Canada Reads. Alas, Olympic swimmer Maggie Mac Neil only had one day on the program to champion the novel she’d selected, Samantha M. Bailey’s 2022 domestic thriller Watch Out for Her.

The novel features a family starting over in a disquieting rental house in Toronto, after an upsetting experience with the summer nanny at their Vancouver home. Their young son is distraught. He’s lost both his beloved babysitter and, he discovers as they settle in for their first night, the stuffed toy she gave him.

Then it appears on his bed, as if by magic. The house is filled with hidden cameras. Not unsurprisingly, the heroine is freaking out.

The insistent visits of a new neighbour, who always arrives bearing baked goods, are not helping. Neither is her guilt about the naked photographs she surreptitiously took of their nanny, over the summer. And here I’m hung up on a technical point. The nanny lived a ten-minute bike ride away, but her bedroom is visible and can be photographed from her employers’ home?

I’m only a third of the way through the novel, but I’m enjoying it. I liked Bailey’s first book Woman on the Edge, and I appreciate that she identifies her settings as Canadian, rather than as vague Midwestern cities to appeal to American readers.

The protagonist is in the tradition of Joy Fielding’s heroines, heading into early middle age with anxiety about grey hair and wrinkles, a bit bored as the intensive child-rearing years gobble up her time and energy. She returns with some relief (and some far-reaching consequences) to photography, in part at the urging of Holly, the nanny in question.

Holly’s a conundrum. She’s the daughter of a wealthy pharmaceutical scion, and at twenty-one, she’s just completed her first year of medical school. But her parents want her to be a summer babysitter, to help polish her c.v. for pediatrics. Really? Volunteering in a peds ward, or a program for children with disabilities, seems way more likely to achieve that goal. I’m wondering if there’s another agenda. Holly’s been manipulated for years by her father and, sigh, her evil stepmother to woo potential investors. Her waves of red hair are a boon to R & D, apparently.

Mac Neil explained that she selected the book because it was accessible to a broader range of readers, including reluctant ones. She herself had a long non-reading stretch. The plot moves swiftly. Chapters are short.

This is a really important point which I tend to overlook. I was free of the decoding challenges that a lot of people have, including those with dyslexia in my own family. That is not everyone’s experience, and in a world awash with print of all kinds, reading difficulties create socioeconomic divides.

Improving reading facility matters, for young people and for adults. Several of Canada’s best-known mystery and crime writers have participated in publishing projects to create “high/low” or “hi-lo” books, with “high interest” storytelling and “low reading demands”.

For example, Gail Bowen has written a whole series of spin-off novels about Charlie Dowhaniuk, her popular radio DJ character. CBC Saskatchewan even created a radio adaptation of the Charlie D. books. Orca Books has a terrific selection of Canadian-authored hi-lo novels, and a number of them feature mystery plots, which makes sense. The genre conventions can immediately draw in readers, and suspense can keep them reading.

“Plot is everything in a thriller,” observed Linwood Barclay on Day 1 of Canada Reads. He went on to explain that “a lot of great thrillers do more,” such as developing significant, place-based, environmental or political themes. Arguably, Bailey’s theme is the plight of the stay-at-home mother living in affluent circumstances. But that is, for many, a very tiny violin problem.

Barclay–himself, of course, one of Canada’s most illustrious authors of the domestic thriller–also faulted the novel for not being as character-driven as it could have been. Participant Saïd M’Dahoma concurred, wishing for additional character motivation and backstory.

I’m glad a thriller made it onto Canada Reads, and Mac Neil gamely defended her choice. But I’m reminded, as I am every time I try to watch a whole week of the show, that there’s something fundamentally wrongheaded about it. And I do find it irritating that they select people, to debate the merits of books, who are not particularly articulate speakers or insightful readers.

There are always a couple of exceptions, but participants are chosen for their achievements in other areas, not for readerly acumen. Sometimes it really shows. These are Personalities, and they’re fascinating; I’d love to hear them talk about their lives and careers. For book coverage, please give me hosts who ask interesting questions, writers who respond with spirited enthusiasm, and/or excellent readers who can probe the complexities of the works.

In short, BBC books coverage. Or in this country, Shelagh Rogers or Elinor Wachtel or Donna Bailey Nurse. We have people who are brilliant about books, and I wish the CBC featured more of them. The democratic spirit behind Canada Reads is admirable, and the program prompts book-buying. These are good things, but we could benefit from a CBC-TV show of the type that Adrienne Clarkson used to host, or on which Barbara Amiel used to appear. Something sharper, with rapier wit and genuine debate, and fewer truisms about the power of literature to unite us.

A small, odd anecdote: this weekend I met someone who spent years working as a guide and gardener in various Ontario cemeteries. Including the one, it turns out, where my mother and stepfather have their memorial plaques.

But she worked in the bigger Toronto cemeteries as well. She told me about Conrad Black’s planned-in-advance grave marker, a giant stone with the single name “Black” chiselled onto it, and she wasn’t sure if it was still like that. Since my visit next month includes the Cabbagetown necropolis and the Mount Pleasant cemetery, I look forward to seeing how wealthy Torontonians sought to be remembered.