Half Moon Bay by Alice LaPlante

Published by Scribner on July 10, 2018

Half Moon Bay is a town in northern California. Early in the novel that Alice LaPlante named after the town, LaPlante describes the place and the nature of the people who inhabit it in photographic detail.

A mile north of Half Moon Bay is Princeton-by-the-Sea, where 39-year-old Jane O’Malley lives in a cottage. A year and two months after the death of her daughter Angela, Jane is still shattered. She claims to be building a new life, but she cannot overcome the sense that she has been punished for daring to experience brief moments of happiness. If anything, she might be coming apart even more as she tries to hide from everyone who knows her.

Jane blames herself for her daughter’s death. Jane’s relationship with her rebellious teenage daughter was typical, meaning not good, and the bad memories impair Jane’s ability to come to terms with her death.

Much of Half Moon Bay is about Jane’s efforts to escape from her pain, including the joy she experiences when she spends time with a new couple in town. Jane bonds with Alma, who has lost children, although Alma lost hers voluntarily, leaving them behind when she found Edward. Jane bonds with Edward in a different way. The young surfer dude who helps her tend plants at the local nursery seems oddly attentive, and his interaction with Jane is just a little creepy.

The novel’s plot revolves around the abduction and murder of children at various intervals. When the bodies are found, each child (always a girl) is wearing makeup, her hair is styled, and she is posed as if she is enjoying the day. The media begin to overwhelm the locals because readers will always click news stories about dead children. The locals are suspicious of the newcomers in town (the ones who weren’t born there) and of single or newly divorced men. The town’s mood becomes grim as the pattern continues and the horror grows.

A number of town residents are offered as suspects, including Jane, who might be dealing with her grief by taking children from other parents. The novel creates a mystery by asking the reader to identify the killer from among those suspects, but it also creates a sense of foreboding. Danger for Jane seems to be lurking everywhere in the idyllic community where suspicion grows that she is a serial killer of children.

The story gains power from its realism: the media frenzy surrounding the murders; the judgmental townspeople who are quick to condemn on suspicion alone; the FBI agents who bully everyone who might be a suspect; the fear that overpowers parents; the guilt that parents feel when a child dies. Whether the novel’s resolution is realistic is questionable (the killer’s motivation is not entirely convincing, the mystery’s resolution is disappointingly obvious, and the final threat is too easily overcome), but by the time the last pages arrive, the reader simply wants a release from the suspense, and any release will do. In fact, my  disappointment with the resolution did not arrive until I began to think about the novel, having been released from its spell. But the spell is the thing. The atmosphere, the depth of the characters, the tension — all of those elements are assembled with a master artisan’s care.

In addition to the suspenseful plot and strong characters, Half Moon Bay is worth reading for LaPlante’s perfectly pitched prose and for the characters’ differing perspectives of loss and motherhood. One perspective is that motherhood is a series of losses: a mother loses her baby when she stops nursing; a mother loses her child when she is able to focus on a task for three hours without once thinking about the child. The losses come again and again; each time the child changes into something new and less innocent, each time the child attains more independence. There are, of course, happier ways to look at parenthood, but Half Moon Bay reminds the reader that people process pain and loss in different ways, and that some people may be damaged beyond our understanding.

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