Featured Reading Guide
Julie Myerson
On a Monday night in October in a small seaside town in Suffolk, a woman is brutally murdered. Her name is Lennie and, thinks her best friend Tess, she is not the type to have something happen to her. Something Might Happen is not a murder mystery. There are clues, false trails, detectives, all the paraphernalia of the whodunnit, but Myerson’s concern is with the effect of the murder on an ordinary community and specifically on Tess herself, her husband Mick and her three children. As the police go about their routine investigation, Tess’s world of nappies, Elastoplast and fish fingers begins to…
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Julie Myerson was born in Nottingham in 1960. She is the author of Sleepwalking (1993), The Touch (1996), Me and the Fat Man (1998) and Laura Blundy (2000). She lives in Clapham.
topAbout the Book
On a Monday night in October in a small seaside town in Suffolk, a woman is brutally murdered. Her name is Lennie and, thinks her best friend Tess, she is not the type to have something happen to her. Something Might Happen is not a murder mystery. There are clues, false trails, detectives, all the paraphernalia of the whodunnit, but Myerson’s concern is with the effect of the murder on an ordinary community and specifically on Tess herself, her husband Mick and her three children. As the police go about their routine investigation, Tess’s world of nappies, Elastoplast and fish fingers begins to unravel. Suddenly nothing is certain, the mundane becomes charged with significance, established relationships begin to crumble and places that once were safe are safe no longer. This is a novel of extraordinary skilfulness and almost unbearable tension. Julie Myerson creates a world that is recognizable in every detail, so that when it begins to fracture we feel as if it were our own lives that are under threat.
topJulie Myerson interview/review
Extracts taken from Interview with Candida Crewe in The Sunday Times Magazine – June 2003
“I wanted to write about something really shocking in somewhere that seems safe,” she says, “and chose Suffolk as a good excuse – so I could go there more. Southwold is a sleepy, slightly self-satisfied seaside town. I love it because it hasn’t really changed since the Fifties.
The place I went for cream teas as a little girl is still there, and the shop where I bought felt mice with crinolines was, too, until only two years ago. Other than Southwold, nothing else in my life – except my mother – stayed the same. It’s very comforting to see my children running around on the same green I did as a child.”
Although Southwold isn’t actually named in the novel, having a murder in the car park did make Myerson feel she “was soiling something really good”. It felt even stranger using her own children as characters; Tess’s daughter, Rosa, is Chloe: her son Jordan is Raphael.
“I’ve used whole conversations. I don’t usually do that. I’ve never dared use so much reality before, but the murder would only be horrifying if everything else felt real, not like it took place in some literary landscape, some literary Suffolk. Chloe’s going through a difficult stage; poisonous, angry. I love it. It’s an amazing time for girls.”
Rosa’s fate is not a happy one, and Myerson says it was a painful thing to write. “I’m trying to explore parental anxiety and the whole thing about safety. I’m trying to write as a mother. Children are more intensely important physically and emotionally than anything, they’re the centre of you. The passion for a baby came out in Sleepwalking and Laura Blundy, the mother bond is very central to those novels, but in this book I wanted to explore being apart and separate again, those moments when you take your eyes off the ball, as when the baby’s on the shore and Tess is swimming, only half watching her because she’s kissing (her lover). I’m exploring the anxiety, the balance, the guilt.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The novel has an incredible air of tension with the title Something Might Happen pervading throughout – how does Myerson achieve this tension and build on it as the novel progresses?
- Tess’s narrative is incredibly honest and frank and we learn everything from her point of view. Do you feel empathy for her? Is she a likeable protagonist?
- The book is set in a quiet seaside town in Suffolk with a tight knit community where apparently nothing ever happens. Both the location and the community are as much a part of the book as the main characters – what impact does the location have on the book?
- Tess has very different relationships with the men in the novel – discuss her relationship with Mick, Alex and Lacey. Is Lacey brief escapism from her “normal world” or does he represent something more?
- Loss and grief are emotions very much at the fore-front of the novel. Discuss the way the different characters deal with their emotions – particularly the children’s response as a comparison with that of the adults.
- Discuss the ending of the novel. Where you pleased or disappointed with the ending? Where you expecting something else?
Other Books by Julie Myerson
Not A Games Person
PE. You either loved it or hated it, looked forward to it or dreaded it, but…
Out of Breath
It s the summer holidays. And suddenly there s a strange boy at the bottom of…
Sleepwalking
The eighth month of pregnancy proves difficult for Susan. Her remote and un…
Something Might Happen
On a Monday night in October in a small seaside town in Suffolk, a woman is …
The Story of You
It begins with snow, the story of you. A freezing room in a student house,…
The Touch
When Donna, Will and Gayle find Frank Chapman, a self-proclaimed healer and …
Suggested Further Reading
- The Lovely Bones ~ Alice Sebold
- Blue Diary ~ Alice Hoffman
- Me and the Fat Man ~ Julie Myerson
- The Taxi Drivers Daughter ~ Julia Darling