Thrills, suspects, paranoia
The Haters
by Robyn Harding
New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024
$29.00 / 9781538766101
Reviewed by Jessica Poon
*
Every time I read a Robyn Harding thriller, I worry about society. In other words, a Robyn Harding book is cause for a single session of binge-reading punctuated with that rapturous state of feeling appalled at human behaviour.
Camryn Lane is forty-four years old and in an enviable position—a six-figure advance for her debut novel, Burnt Orchid; an accomplished daughter, Liza, whose custody is shared with an amicable ex-husband; genuinely supportive friends; a hot younger boyfriend, and the additional job security as a part-time school counsellor at a high school. Sure, maybe a few writers are barely able to conceal their envy, but that just confirms the rare glamour of her life.
In life and in thrillers, contentment cannot last. Prepare for entropy.
Camryn receives an inflammatory e-mail and a one-star review that leads to a veritable abattoir of heartless one-star reviews. She is condemned for allegedly exploiting high school students’ trauma to inspire her fiction. Never mind that the allegations are false—the rapidity of lies constituting online discourse spread with the speed of an airborne virus. The notion that an author should never look at their Goodreads ratings is, in theory, a good idea. But common sense has no part in most people’s lives, particularly when any unvetted stranger has the capacity to disseminate career-destroying fallacies in an uncouth game of telephone. The Internet, it seems, has made opinions a less effortful version of vigilante justice. After the first in a long series of incendiary reviews, both Camryn’s sales and safety are affected.
Meanwhile, at school earlier in the year a girl named Abby Lester was filmed naked after taking too much molly. Camryn’s pretty sure that Fiona Carmichael, a stereotypically beautiful blonde queen, knows more than she’s letting on. Everyone is very online; everyone is reprehensibly suspect.
Camryn loses credibility in both of her careers despite her vehement, truthful denials that her fiction really is just fiction. Her daughter is unduly embarrassed—and quite frankly, behaves like a total brat—and spends more time at her father’s. Camryn’s friends start to suspect she is paranoid. Rumours proliferate that Camryn is actually responsible for her own trolling, to garner notoriety. To protest is to protest too much; to say nothing is to withstand further reputation decimation. Camryn is damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Is Camryn’s stalker an unhinged stranger, or a known enemy? The suspense factor is high.
The trouble with batshit crazy occurrences is how reliably it begets batshit crazy behaviour. One does wonder, are you a real writer if you haven’t gotten a death threat yet? Camryn, determined to find out who’s responsible for trying to derail her career, reputation, and her life, drives from Vancouver to Seattle to badger the woman she believes is responsible. But the woman’s identification has been appropriated for pillorying Camryn, and Camryn’s unhinged accusations are filmed faster than you can say cancel culture.
As usual, Vancouver-based Harding has an abundance of red herrings for the reader. She has a knack for hot topics and scandals. She doesn’t shy away from making adolescents irredeemably evil. In between Camryn’s debacles, are chapters from her novel, Burnt Orchid, a ribald, sensationalistic thriller that occasionally eclipses The Haters.
There are no fewer than three instances where Camryn doesn’t eat the food before her during an emotional upheaval. Two feature pizza and one features pain de raisin—the latter of which gets discarded in the trash with melodrama reminiscent of Serena van der Woodsen throwing her cell phone in the trash in an early Gossip Girl episode where “Believe” by The Bravery plays with outsized pathos. Uneaten pizza, a trashed pain de raisin—Marie Antoinette would not approve.
Camryn’s near genuflection of her own daughter gave me pause, reminding me yet again of Serena van der Woodsen asking her mother to quit dating her longtime love, on account of him being the father of Serena’s on and off boyfriend. Serena’s deeply irrational fear was to end up dating her stepbrother, which, while awkward, doesn’t actually qualify as incest. Here’s the kicker: Serena’s mother agrees and stops dating the love of her life. Serena’s relationship with her potential stepbrother, like 99% of teenage romances, ends. This level of matriarchal compromise strikes me not only as downright surreal, but ridiculously asinine.
In The Haters, Camryn asks her teenage daughter, prefrontal cortex not fully formed and all, for permission to do something. Her daughter says no and Camryn capitulates. Who’s parenting whom? At that point, I almost longed for a healthy dose of neglectful parenting.
I didn’t correctly guess the culprit. Just as Harding likely intended, I, mirroring Camyrn, suspected everyone. While reading, I realized I missed reading Harding’s rendering of an adolescent voice in first-person, which she did fabulously in 2020’s The Swap. The Haters is fun, but in truth, I wished it was, pardon my French, more fucked up.
As always, though, Harding delivers high entertainment value on her juicy premise; your circadian rhythm will surely suffer, but it’s worth it.
*
Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has reviewed books by Roz Nay, Anne Fleming, Miriam Lacroix, Taslim Burkowicz, Sam Wiebe, Amy Mattes, Louis Druehl, Sheung-King, Loghan Paylor, Lisa Moore (ed.), Sandra Kelly, Robyn Harding, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Lai, Logan Macnair, Jen Sookfong Lee, J.M. Miro (Steven Price), Bri Beaudoin, Tetsuro Shigematsu, Katie Welch, Megan Gail Coles, and Ayesha Chaudhry for BCR]
*
The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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