Stephanie Jones: Book Review - Disclaimer by Renee Knight

The novel as weapon is the interesting conceit upon which Renee Wright, a former documentary-maker, constructs her first novel, Disclaimer. A psychological thriller that pushes every genre button, the story centres on two couples with only children. Stephen and Nancy Brigstocke are the parents of Jonathan, and Catherine and Robert Ravenscroft of Nicholas.

The families have little in common aside from their comfortable middle-class status, and a secret – harboured by Catherine and discovered by Stephen and Nancy – that catalyzes a revenge plot. Two-thirds of the way through the 300-page text, I thought I knew where it was going, and more fool me. Knight is adept at the bait-and-switch, using the unreliability of Stephen as narrator to propel a convincing yarn about concealment, predation and self-deceit.

Nancy has been dead for a decade when Stephen begins to distribute the novel she wrote, a work he regards as proof of her talent and a vindication of the estrangement they experienced after many years of marriage. Stephen’s own writing career never progressed beyond the nascent, and by most measures he lives an unremarkable life.

Having sped up his departure from teaching at a second-rate private school by being unable to hide his disdain of his young pupils, Stephen is friendless, self-absorbed and obsessed with terrorizing and punishing Catherine: for what, Knight reveals with tantalizing leisureliness.

A prominent thematic note in Disclaimer is the distinction between perception and reality. Nancy’s notes record her view of Catherine as “cold, as if things washed over her without leaving a mark – as if she has been Scotchgarded. Nothing seems to stick to her.” By others, Catherine is regarded as “a woman of sound credentials . . . who can be trusted to do the right thing.” Can both be true?

What is clear is that Catherine is not a naïve woman. Of Disclaimer’s pair of marriages, we see one in action, and one half of the couple working to maintain its equilibrium. Catherine believes all unions to be delicate, and she thinks she has succeeded in keeping her own on course. Robert comes fully into focus only once the painstaking revelation of his wife’s secret history is complete, and the couple is confronted with the cost of refusing to admit the possibility of crisis.

Catherine makes a fascinating protagonist. Self-pitying, obtuse, disconnected from her child, she is designed to baffle and infuriate a reader – until, in one fell swoop, Knight upends the narrative and issues a keen reminder about the recklessness of assumption.

It is not a criticism to say that there is a hollow, somewhat dispassionate quality to Knight’s writing. Even in moments of death and bereavement, the action is conveyed at a remove. In a novel about observation, retelling and the unknowable space between them, this is fitting.