I had a love hate relationship with this book. I'm glad I read it; I enjoyed most of it; but I wouldn't suggest this title be an introduction to Wayne Johnston's writing. I liked seeing threads of his stories woven through this one, but the novel should come with trigger warnings about the sexual abuse.

THE MYSTERY OF RIGHT AND WRONG is an intense novel about four sisters and the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father and the mother who refused to acknowledge what was happening. Hans Van Hout left Amsterdam for South Africa after WW ll. He claimed many things about his life during the war one of which was being part of the resistance. In South Africa Hans met and married Myra. Hans and Myra had four daughters together. Hans was an associate professor of accounting at the University. The times allowed the family to live a privileged lifestyle. An undisclosed event happened at the university forcing Hans to pack up his family and leave South Africa for St. John’s Newfoundland where he secured another associate professor teaching position. It was here Rachel the youngest of the Van Hout sisters met a young Wade Jackson who was working as a journalist with aspirations of becoming a full time writer.
Wade soon witnessed the power and control Hans had over his four adult daughters.
Gloria the oldest sister was already on her fourth marriage to Max. Carmen was a drug addict living with her drug dealing husband Fritz. Bethany was an anorexic. Rachel was obsessed with Anne Frank. She read Anne’s diary obsessively and wrote in her own diary continuously. When Hans declared it was time to return home to South Africa, Rachel and Bethany had to return as well. The family would be once again be united.
Wade was deeply in love with Rachel and agreed to move with her when she asked.
It was in South Africa where Wade learned the truth about Hans from Bethany’s fiancé.
While in hospital Bethany revealed the details of the abuse she had endured from Hans. Eventually it was discovered she wasn’t the only victim.
THE MYSTERY OF RIGHT AND WRONG is a disturbing novel. Parts of the story are told in verse. The family history is revealed through a ballad narrated by Hans. Rachel too writes a poem called the Ariellad. Discovering from the author’s notes that the story was based on true life events heightened the level of discomfort the story evoked.
Despite the subject matter I thought THE MYSTERY OF RIGHT AND WRONG was a well written book. These type of stories are not easy to read but it feels important that they should be brought out in the open. Though the women suffered they also showed great strength and endurance to survive.
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced digital edition of this book.

Synopsis: Wade Jackson was born and raised in Newfoundland. One day in the university library he meets Rachel van Hout, a young woman who immigrated to Canada from South Africa with her parents a number of years previously. As Wade gets to know Rachel, her parents and three sisters, he discovers that the sisters are all are broken in some way – one is anorexic, one is addicted to drugs and married to a drug dealer, and the third has a string of broken marriages. Rachel’s quirk is that she reads The Diary of Ann Frank obsessively, over and over again and she diarizes her days using a secret language that she made up. When Rachel’s father retires, he and his wife decide to move back to South Africa, and Rachel and Wade agree to go with them and spend six months there as Wade has never left Newfoundland and this gives him an opportunity to see a bit of the world and work on a book he is trying to write. While in South Africa, the façade of the family cracks and everything comes to a head and Wayne learns why each daughter is a wounded soul.

My thoughts: When I first started reading this book, I found it difficult as there is a lot of poetry (or ballads) in the book and I am not a lover of poetry but I was still really intrigued by the story and didn’t want to DNF it. I ended up switching to the audiobook version of the book and I found that it worked much better for me. The characters are well developed and while the story line is riveting, I felt myself filled with a dread anticipating what the truth really was that caused these women to be so troubled. Once I switched to the audiobook, I flew through the approximately 550 pages of this book but what blew me away was the afterword from the author. I’m not going to go into details as that would spoil everything but needless to say, my mouth was hanging open by the time I finished reading it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

have read most of Wayne Johnston’s novels and have enjoyed them all; those I have reviewed on my blog have all been given 4-star ratings. I was excited to receive a digital galley of The Mystery of Right and Wrong, his latest, and it does not disappoint.

Wade Jackson, a young aspiring writer from a Newfoundland outport, meets Rachel van Hout while at university in St. John’s and falls in love with her. Little does he know how much the van Hout family will change his life. As he gets to meet Rachel’s three sisters and their parents Hans and Myra, he comes to see how dysfunctional they are. The daughters are all damaged souls: Gloria is hypersexual and has had a spate of broken marriages; Gloria is addicted to drugs provided by her husband Fritz; Bethany is an anorexic who has made several suicide attempts; and Rachel is hyperlexic, obsessively reading Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis, and hypergraphic, obsessively writing a diary in a secret language. Wade accompanies Rachel to South Africa and it’s then that more and more family secrets are revealed, most with Hans at the centre.

The point of view alternates between Wade, Rachel, Rachel’s encoded diary entitled “The Arelliad” written in both prose and poetry, and Hans’ “The Ballad of Clan Van Hout”, a poetic family history which he composes and recites to his daughters. Reading “The Arelliad” is sometimes frustrating because much is left unexplained. Who, for example, is “Shadow She, the also-Anne”? The ballad is also confusing because Hans’ version of events changes and it is difficult to know what to believe. It does, however, provide great insight into Han’s mind and personality.

Characterization is a strong element in the novel. All major characters emerge as distinct. The four sisters, for instance, cannot be confused. They often seem to behave in illogical ways, but all is eventually explained. Rachel’s secret is the last to be uncovered, though I did guess the nature of it. Certainly the last great revelation explains Rachel’s obsessions. In case the reader is uncertain as to why she occasionally writes in poetic form, Johnston outlines his reasoning in the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

Hans will remain for me one of literature’s great villains; more than once I thought of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. He is full of self-pity: “I’m not the star that I should be because so many worker bees have spent their lives opposing me . . . the great held back by also-rans.” He doesn’t love his wife, pretending to “adore the woman who so loudly snores, the aging face, the greying head I cannot bear to touch in bed.” He wishes he “could have another wife” but “I would not sully with divorce what matters most – my name of course.” He’s a racist who said “’that the blacks were uncivilized and impossible to educate, so they should never be allowed to vote or to mix with whites.’” He is a master manipulator who accepts no blame for even his most despicable of behaviour. Some of his comments in his ballad left me speechless. Yet the reader, like Rachel, will ask, “Was it the sum of his experience that made [him] what he was, or some mechanism in his brain, some defect in his DNA?”

As the title indicates, the book examines right and wrong. Hans argues that right and wrong change over time, “The rules are endlessly revised.” Decisions made by several people at different times in the novel inspire one to consider if a wrong can be a right in certain circumstances. In order to survive, for instance, is it right to commit a wrong? As the author admits, he doesn’t offer answers to the questions it poses, but book clubs will find much to debate.

At over 550 pages, the book is lengthy. At first the revelations come slowly but then I wondered what other secrets would be revealed. I was even starting to think that the book was becoming almost unbelievable. Then the Author’s Note clarifies that the novel is based on people and events in his life. I was astonished by what Johnston discloses and by his bravery in doing so.

I highly recommend this book. Though the pace is sometimes slow and sections are confusing, all is eventually made clear. And though it touches on many serious topics, it is, as the author states, not a totally dark book. I’m not certain that I, like one of the book’s characters, can claim to be a “great reader” who reads with “hard-won discrimination,” but I do know this is a book that will reward a second reading: I’m certain it will make the author’s skill even more obvious.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Wow, I don’t even know where to start with this review. I have such mixed feelings after having read this book and don’t know if I would recommend it but perhaps not for the reasons you may think.

It is gut wrenching and disturbing and full of trigger warnings. It gives both the viewpoint of victims of child sexual abuse and that of the offender. I normally wouldn’t put what might be a bit of a spoiler in a review but when this became known to me, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I felt ill.

Some of my notes from the first half of the book were that the author seemed to be trying to parse his thoughts through his writing, the repetition of an action sounded like mental illness and that one of the characters has the same initials as the author. I share these because we learn in the author’s note at the end of Johnston’s relationship to the story.

The story reminded me of a raindrop that falls into a puddle and creates concentric circles. There were ever expanding layers to the story. The main character of Rachel is obsessed with Anne Frank and another Anne that she writes about it in her coded language. Hans, the father, also claims to have a connection to Anne Frank-one that will both surprise and anger you.

While part of the story is told in the author’s typical setting of Newfoundland, it also has settings in South Africa and Amsterdam.

Told in both prose and verse, it was a bit difficult for this reader’s mind to switch back and forth but I was impressed by the rhyming.

The first half of this rather long book is a bit slow but knowing what I know now I see in part why the author chose to do this. The second half picked up significantly and threw a few surprises into the story.

Overall, I am impressed by this book as I have been with many of his previous books that I now need to go back and look at for hidden messages from this book, THE book as the author calls it.

Thank you to @netgalley and @knopfca for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. The Mystery of Right and Wrong publishes September 21, 2021.

Wayne Johnston is something of a national treasure in Canadian literature. He is, perhaps, most famous for writing historical novels that feature Newfoundland as a prominent setting. However, his new book, The Mystery of Right and Wrong, marks a bit of a turn. While some of it is set in Newfoundland, a lot of it is set in Cape Town, South Africa. It is also a thinly-veiled fictitious memoir of life with his wife’s family. It turns out — according to the author’s note at the back — that a lot of this novel is real in some way, and the book exposes very dark family secrets that might bear the adage of the truth being stranger than fiction. For that reason, I’m almost hesitant to pen a review. This is clearly a book that Johnston wanted to write to expose the darkness in his own extended family, but I wonder if the finished product might wind up hurting people more than helping. That’s all I feel I can say on that matter for now, not only to not spoil the novel but also to be respectful of some of the lives that will be impacted by the publication of this book. This is not an easy read to digest, so I’ll try to pretend here, for the most part, that this is just another ordinary novel with no ties to reality.

The Mystery of Right and Wrong is set in the mid-‘80s and is largely told from the viewpoints of two narrators: Wade, an aspiring writer, and Rachel, the young woman he falls in love with while working as a newspaper reporter in St. John’s. Rachel has moved to St. John’s with her family from South Africa and has a sort of mental illness that compels her to write in a diary in a secret, made-up language. That diary is presented in the text (mostly in English, not the invented language), along with the writing of her father Hans, as a combination of rhyming poetry and prose. In any event, Wade and Rachel wind up moving to Cape Town with her family (her parents and three other sisters) a couple of years after they meet, and that’s when Rachel’s weird but otherwise seemingly idyllic family really starts to unravel. Incidentally, Rachel is infatuated with The Diary of Anne Frank, so much so that she gives Jeff Mangum a run for his money. (Neutral Milk Hotel fans will have some idea what I’m talking about.) In any event, through a combination of prose and poetry, and shifting point-of-views, family secrets begin to untangle like skin being peeled off an onion.

I must admit that I’m on the fence with The Mystery of Right and Wrong, not only because of the painful truths that this novel excavates. On one hand, the prose sections are well done, and the novel is readable during these sections as they propel the plot forward. It’s also good that the novel presents people living with addictions and mental illnesses as real and powerful — aside from Rachel’s form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, her sisters suffer from either sex addiction, anorexia, or drug abuse. I was glad to see characters who were flawed and had serious problems be given a lot of pages to explore the roots of these disorders. And the book can be thrilling in a chilling sort of way, but to say more would risk giving away parts of the novel. The Mystery of Right and Wrong is best read as though you knew nothing of the author’s circumstances. If you plan on reading it, you might want to just stop reading about the book and just experience it, as this is an experience that is probably best served (if you come to it) cold.

However, one of the major problems I had with the read was with the rhyming poetry. On one hand, it’s kind of necessary so you can know what’s going on in Hans’ and Rachel’s minds that remain secretive to the other characters. On the other hand, a lot of it is juvenile puff — which may be the point because Hans isn’t much of a writer, and Rachel isn’t much of one either, even though she has filled up many of her diaries in her made-up language and has put so many marginal notes into various copies of Anne Frank’s diary as to make those books illegible. Still, the poetry comes off as cloying — and it’s clear that the author has trouble with coming up with things other than lazy rhymes because some of the poetry will, on a dime, switch over to prose and then go back again as it suits Johnston’s needs. Perhaps the book would have been better if it just stuck with the prose, which is the author’s key strength.

The other thing that burdens this book is that there’s a lot of Anne Frank in it. Don’t get me wrong, Anne Frank is an important historical figure who sheds light on the horrors of the Holocaust. However, I’ve never gone out and read her work because I figure that knowing how she died makes her output feel depressing, no matter how relatively optimistic she may have been about being rescued by the Allies she was while writing her diary. And so, we get pages and pages of Rachel imagining that she’s being haunted in a secret world of her own by Frank. It’s exhausting to read, and, to be honest, not very interesting. I can say that because this novel is more than 500 pages long if some of the material about Rachel’s infatuation with Anne Frank was left on the cutting room floor, the better and more interesting The Mystery of Right and Wrong would be. And, honestly, Rachel’s fascination with Frank doesn’t go anywhere — though a reason for it is provided by the end of the novel.

However, it’s the fact that much of what’s in these pages is the truth is that bothers me. I find it a bit ghoulish for a writer to expose skeletons in his extended family’s closet when the crux of it isn’t about him. However, Johnston’s family isn’t the ones I think might be hurt by this. For reasons of not explaining too much of the plot or story, I worry about people who were impacted by a member of Johnston’s wife’s family might find it rich that the author is profiting off someone else’s dark and criminal behaviour. I must wonder why Johnston didn’t go to the police with the information he knew about at a time when it mattered, rather than write about it some 25 years after the fact (which is how long Johnston has been holding onto this secret) when the key players have passed on. For that reason, The Mystery of Right and Wrong is a hard book for me to stomach. I think the motivations for sharing this book with the general public — that is, to earn a livelihood from its writing — are all wrong.

Still, if you can take this book as a sort of autobiography of family secrets that are fictionalized, you might be able to enjoy it for what it’s worth. It’s overlong and self-indulgent, but there are some charitable things to say about this volume. The real mystery is why this book is being shared with fans as entertainment, one that might have the families of those victimized by a monster wondering why these secrets are being revealed in this form. While I did enjoy parts of the book, I felt — at the end of the day — that maybe this was a book better off being unpublished and being for the author’s eyes alone due to its shocking revelations about a possible real-life murderer who should have seen justice rather than being something to profit from. At best, The Mystery of Right and Wrong was a mixed bag for me to be sure, and a huge question mark as to why this is being published when an even-handed non-fiction book might have been more respectful.

I absolutely loved this book! The storyline kept me guessing right till the end! Boy oh boy that ending! I loved the way the author wrapped up the story. I highly recommend this book

<i>The mystery of right and wrong<i/> is a fictional story about a very dysfunctional family. Wade is a university student and would be writer who meets the girl of his dreams in the library one day. Little does he know this will be quite a roller coaster ride. <i>The mystery of right and wrong</i> is written by Wayne Johnson, a prolific author with many novels to his credit.

Wade is in the library one day and catches the eye of a girl. They become a couple. Rachel turns out to be quite a prolific writer which makes Wade jealous because he is struggling to become a writer himself. It turns out that Rachel actually suffers from a malady where she cannot stop writing or reading. She is obsessed with Anne Frank. Rachel has four sisters and she's originally from South Africa. Her family decides to return to South Africa and Wade decides to go with Rachel for a short term. He finds out that Rachel sisters each have a unique problem and their father seems to exercise control over the whole family. The family spirals down as the novel continues on and more and more of the secrets are revealed.

Johnson is a master in at character development. Rachel is quite a complex character who has an obsession with reading and writing. Wade himself is quite a nice person but seems to have writer’s block as long as he is tied to Rachel. The three sisters also very unique characters and their father seems to be a controlling manipulative person. All of these characters are quite complex and disturbed and they become more so as the story continues.

Overall the story is quite compelling because it is about family dynamics and how the family members interact with each other. How they all become the way they are is quite amazing but the story does take a long time to unfold. I found the middle of the book quite tedious. There are a lot of details especially concerning Rachel and her obsession with Anne Frank. It tends to drag on quite a bit. As well, Rachel’s father develops this fictional story that he recites to his daughters. We go from poetry to prose at times and it becomes confusing and unclear.

The salvation of the book is the way it's wrapped up and how you start to understand what's been going on this whole time. Probably one of the most shocking and interesting things about the book is the author’s revelation at the end of the book. This itself ties into the story quite strongly.

I think of the story is very attractive for those that like stories about family dynamics and how dysfunctional families work. I give the book of three and five primarily because I found it in the middle of the book quite tedious. I want to thank NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada and Knopf Canada for providing me a digital copy of this book. I provide this review voluntarily.

In the publisher’s blurb, it states that in The Mystery of Right and Wrong, critically acclaimed and beloved Canadian author Wayne Johnston “reveals haunting family secrets he's kept for more than 30 years”. With a main character named “Wade Jackson” — an aspiring young novelist from a Newfoundland outport — it is immediately reinforced that Johnston will be cutting close to the bone with this book. What follows is rather harrowing: this is a story of domestic abuse, systemic abuse (from the Nazi occupation of Holland to South African apartheid), intergenerational trauma, and mental illness. It is also a love story, a coming of age story, and an inquiry into whether, in the aftermath of abuse, either evil or free can exist; the titular “mystery” of right and wrong. In a lengthy afterword, Johnston explains which parts are true (and how they played out in real life), and that part gobsmacked me; I can totally see how a masterclass on Johnston’s work can now be taught, with this novel serving as the key that unlocks it all. This book is courageous and important and compelling, and to be fair, it was also a bit too long, and although Johnston explains the reasons for the segments in verse, I found them, as they went on, exasperating. I am grateful to have received an advanced reading copy of this book five months before publication and I am daunted by the idea of being the first to review and “rate” it, but here goes: based on its importance and artistry, five stars; based on my personal “enjoyment” of the reading experience, I’m knocking it back to four. I have no doubt that The Mystery of Right and Wrong will make a big stir upon its release and I am looking forward to reading what others make of it.