The Observer, by Marina Endicott, follows the life of Julia and Hardy after arriving in rural Alberta's Medway, for Hardy’s first posting as an RCMP constable.
I found many similarities between this novel and my own life, as the wife of security and first responder for a mental health and addictions centre. There are joys, but there are also intensely deep sorrows. Lives are saved, and lives are lost.
My words can't do this novel justice, so here are some quotes that really spoke to me.

"Does someone teach us to see beauty, or does the world show it to us all the time?”

“But I’m a fine one to object to people being self-conscious—if it wasn’t for self-consciousness I’d barely be conscious at all.”

“I was scared sometimes, but never alone-in-the-city scared. There, I’d been afraid of people—here I was afraid or in awe of elemental forces. Nothing was directed at me; I was a mere speck”

“After a while he said, “And one of the reasons we can’t get to the bottom of it is that the first impulse we have is to shove people aside who have mental health issues, attempt to make them different. So the last thing you’ll do is tell anyone, because you know they will make you different.” Ben said, “That guy, you know—the guy I knew? Never said a thing. It was literally easier to die than to ask for help.”"

“But now I could not ever commit suicide, because of Ethan. That is the deal you make when you have a child.”

Many thanks to @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for providing me with a copy of this 5 star novel!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. While I found the pace of this book to be a bit slow, thus it took me a while to get through, I still found the writing to be so well done. I thought it was just the right amount of detail to clearly convey the subject, sentiments and feeling of the timeline.

The topic is a very interesting and important one, detailing the trauma that the RCMP (police in rural Canadian towns/areas for non-Canadians) experience on a day-to-day basis and the toll that it takes. I reside in the large centre the protagonist traveled to and I am familiar with the case that is fictionalized in the book involving an individual who was responsible for the heinous ambush murder of 4 RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, Canada. While one can only imagine the mindset of this individual and the impact he had on the area residents, the book reflected the sense of discomfort that must have been felt.

Fiction, based on the author's own experiences living in Mayerthorpe, Alberta.

Julia and her partner move to Medville for his first posting with the RCMP. Police works exacts a toll on officers and their families. This is a dark, episodic novel that offers some insight into what those that protect us, go through.

Living in Mayerthorpe, I recognized characters and places described in this book. And because I'm aware of events that came after the time period explored in The Observer, it was an eerie read.

I am glad I read this novel. I'm sure it's one that will haunt me.

Apparently set in the 1990s, this novel offers a glimpse into the life of the partner of an RCMP constable. It focuses on Julia Carey, a former dramaturge who moves from Saskatchewan with her significant—taciturn—other, Hardy, to Medway, a town north of Edmonton in rural Alberta. Previously a sports journalist, Hardy has recently undergone training with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We’re told his father had been a member of the force, but it’s not at all clear why Hardy, an older recruit, decided to make such a drastic career change.

When the couple first move to Medway, they quickly learn of a young constable’s suicide a few years before. Then, not too far into Hardy’s posting, a fellow he trained with at the Academy in Regina comes to stay with him and Julia for a two-week stress leave. Soon enough it becomes evident that police work is taking a toll on Hardy as well. He becomes, “opaque, exhausted, often impatient, or just bleak in mind,” increasingly visited by “dark moods and irritability,” and eventually incapacitated by PTSD. The novel is a first-person account of Julia’s perceptions and experiences.

During her early days in Medway, Julia fills in for a month at The Observer, the town’s local paper, when Catherine, its editor, takes her annual summer holiday. Julia herself will end up becoming the paper’s editor when Catherine moves on. However, the initial connection with the editor is a valuable one. Having lived in Medway her whole life, she has her finger on the pulse of the town and can fill the newcomer in on local happenings, criminal and otherwise. This is the only way Julia is able to learn about the difficult cases tight-lipped Hardy has been working on—cases that are obviously causing him significant distress and marked changes in behaviour. When her stint at the paper is up, Julia is briefly employed as a substitute teacher at the local high school. Lacking certification, she’s paid a pittance for emotionally draining work. Nevertheless, it offers her further insight into the community. Not long after that, having reconciled herself to infertility, she’s surprised to learn she’s pregnant. Hardy’s response to the news is not the anticipated joyous one. His only remark: He won’t be able to quit his job. No, he won’t, and it costs all of them, as the novel will show.

Overall, THE OBSERVER is a meandering and modest book. It is replete with mundane details of rural and domestic life (barbecues and get-togethers and the names of everyone in attendance) as well as plentiful gossipy information about the lives of locals (including the young widow of the constable who committed suicide, a beekeeper, and Johnny Mair, a volatile and often violent drunk, who is perpetually in trouble with the law). The novel has a very large cast of characters, most only superficially sketched. It’s hard to keep their identities straight. There’s also an overabundance of insignificant events reported on in consistently pedestrian prose. Rather than be given carte blanche to itemize seemingly every single happening, the author should have been taken in hand by her editor and advised to describe only the few most telling incidents.

In the end, I can’t recommend this novel. To me it read like an uninspired memoir or a tidied-up, emotionally flat personal journal—significant for the writer, maybe, but much less so for the reader. I was mostly very, very bored. I made it to the end, but just barely. To be clear: the book isn’t terrible. It’s accessible, and it does offer insight into what life is like for the wives and partners of first responders. The problem is that the whole thing just goes on far too long. Less would really have been so much more.

The Observer is a fiction novel, based on the author's own lived experiences as the wife of an RCMP officer, posted to a northern town in Alberta. This story recounts the pain of a wife's constant worry and helplessness of witnessing the physically, but mostly mentally and emotionally gruelling work of her husband -- and the thought that with such dangerous work, you never know when your goodbye will be the final one he hears. This was an emotional yet eye-opening story of trauma, of policing -- but mostly, about the power of being present and caring for the ones you love.

⚠️ Potential trigger warnings: PTSD, trauma, suicide, arson, homicide (may not be an exhaustive list)

🙏 Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the gifted electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This novel depicts the struggles of RCMP officers and their partners in small rural communities.

The setting is the 1990s in a fictional small town in northern Alberta. Julia, the narrator, is a playwright and dramaturge who pauses her career to move with her partner Hardy to Medway where he has his first posting. She takes a part-time position as editor of the local weekly newspaper, a job which helps her to learn about the community.

Life is not easy for either Hardy or Julia. Hardy works long hours and is often exhausted physically and emotionally by what he witnesses on a regular basis: “He was having a hard time in the mill of stress and exhaustion and heartsickness that overtakes any thoughtful person who does police work.” Unwilling and unable to talk with Julia, Hardy suffers in silence: “talking was a double problem for Hardy: a problem of security and of privacy, a problem both legal and spiritual. Nothing he did at work could ever be told, for security reasons but also out of decency.” The stress and daily exposure to “venal, pointless crime, the waste of intelligence and youth and substance,” and violence and death take a mental toll, resulting in a “weariness of mind and soul.”

Julia struggles as well. Initially she has no job so feels adrift. As an outsider, she has difficulty learning about the customs of a rural community: “There were a lot of rules that I did not yet know or understand. In the two months we’d been here, over and over I had leaped to a conclusion only to discover that I’d been wrong or misinformed, or prejudiced by my earlier urban life.” She does meet other RCMP wives but “all the other wives seemed to accept and naturally understand the natural flow of this life that was so foreign to me.” At RCMP social gatherings, she finds “So many people to catalogue and remember, so much hierarchy to understand.” Though some women do step forward to help her, Julia finds that she “had to pick things up by osmosis, or by stealth.” The newspaper job helps her to meet people and make connections within the community.

Besides feeling lonely because she is an outsider, she also feels lonely because she is virtually abandoned by Hardy who is often not home because of work. Hardy’s silence about work when he is home only adds to Julia’s worry because her imagination goes wild as she thinks of all the terrible things that could happen to him. Then there’s the almost constant fearful waiting for Hardy to come home unharmed. Hardy’s description of their “’living in one long emergency’” is so apt. And then there’s Julia’s sense of powerlessness; she sees her husband struggling with the stresses of his job, but doesn’t know what she can do to help him; she is only aware of her “inability to affect anything or be of help, no matter what got thrown. I prayed all the time, insufficiently, for Hardy.” She fears that, like a former officer in the town, Hardy might commit suicide.

The novel is slow paced, but there is a lot of tension. Readers who remember the Mayerthorpe incident will be aware of the dangers of life for people in law enforcement. I was always wondering what was going to happen to Hardy. Would he be harmed or killed at work? Would he get the help he needs for his PTSD? Would Julia and Hardy’s relationship survive?

Though the book is generally serious, there are touches of humour. Having grown up in a small town, I smiled at Julia’s learning that being told not to bring anything to a social gathering meant “a square might be nice.” And I loved Jerome, an enormous bison named “’after that giraffe puppet who sticks his head into the house on TV.’”

Julia comments, “I kept seeing things that made me revise my former opinions about police, opinions formed by my repugnance for the idea of police authority in general, and by my fear and ignorance.” This novel, based on the experiences of the author and her RCMP husband, may revise some people’s opinions about police, especially when there are calls to defund the police. Julia tries being a substitute teacher and concludes, “Teaching high school is the worst job in the world, and those who do it are not paid nearly enough.” As a former high school teacher, I appreciate that sentiment, but the book shows that policing may be the worst job in the world.

Because of its honest depiction of the realities of life for rural police and their partners, this book is a necessary read.

Simple language but the author certainly vividly portrays the life of an RCMP family from the spouse perspective. Her recollections center mostly around a small town in Northern Alberta including the joys and pitfalls of knowing everyone in town.

The Observer is a fictional memoir detailing the experiences of Julia as she settles into life in Medway, Alberta with her partner Hardy. Hardy is a brand new RCMP recruit and this small, rural town is his first posting.

Told as a first-person account from Julia's perspective, The Observer is a perfectly paced, slow read that allows the reader to become fully immersed in the storyline. Julia describes her life as both her and Hardy find footing in Medway and build connections within the community.

As someone who once lived in a small, rural community in Northern Alberta and arrived there as an outsider, like Julia, there were details within the storyline that resonated with me as a reader. It was easy for me to relate to Julia through descriptions of the setting, Julia's accounts of everyday life, and also through the use of actual Alberta place names in the novel. The mention of midnight lunches, a very small detail in the story, stood out to me as I have only experienced them in Alberta. Such details make The Observer relatable to the point that it no longer feels like a work of fiction.

The Observer is not simply a novel about life in rural Alberta. It is a novel that delves into the deeper, darker corners of RCMP life and the sacrifices that accompany a life of service. The author has leaned on her personal experience as the spouse of a RCMP officer and her time spent living in rural Alberta to build connection and provide a further sense of realism. It is a story that brings context, humanity, and awareness to the experiences of officers and their families. The Observer is a story that will resonate with readers both in and outside of the scope of the RCMP.

Kind thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and Knopf Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for my honest review.

Literary Fiction | Adult
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When new RCMP recruit Hardy is posted to the fictional Alberta town of Medway, he makes a deal with his partner Julia, a playwright who needs a big city for her work. They’ll alternate career focuses for five years, and while in Medway, she can focus on her writing at home. Except he doesn’t quite earn enough to pay the bills, so Julia takes a series of temporary jobs, often with the local newspaper, The Observer, even though she’s not that kind of writer. She is also the sharp-eyed observer in this fictional memoir set in the 1990s, as the book explores Julia’s experiences as a struggling newspaper editor and photographer, the common-law spouse who feels like an outsider in a tight group of RCMP wives, and the city kid who is learning about small-town life. We witness the stress slowly building in Julia and Hardy’s life as he tackles the work of a local cop, from domestic disputes to gruesome accidents, the small joys and tragedies of life in Medway, and the highs and lows of the year as the seasons pass. The book is loosely based on Endicott’s own experiences in Mayerthorpe, AB, where her spouse Peter (whom she thanks in the afterword) served as an RCMP officer. As it happens, my early twenties found me in the small town of Hope B.C., where I worked as the local newspaper editor, and my husband was an auxiliary RCMP officer. The book rings true in so many ways. It also brought up a swath of memories for me, many of them sweet but more than a few uncomfortable ones too. And that’s the kind of book this is. It’s a slow burn of a novel, shifting from a young couple’s optimism to a kind of weariness with life, though as with life, there are moments of laughter and joy too. It’s also an honest portrayal of marriage, and of life as a cop, as the daily exposure to crime, violence and brutality grinds away at your own humanity and optimism, not to mention your marriage. I’ll be recommending this for those looking for a deep read, as it’s neither plot-driven nor light reading. My thanks to Knopf Canada for the digital reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Local pals will soon find a copy on the New Books shelf at the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library – it’s currently on order.
More discussion and reviews of this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75307947

Initially this appears as if to describe the story of a tragedy of a member of then police force in one of Alberta's more remote communities. But as the story advances, one becomes aware of the complexity of life, of relationships, and of jobs in a small community where everyone knows one's business. The story seems to have a successful ending with the main characters becoming stronger, more aware of themselves and their weaknesses, and enduring hardship and unspeakable emotional experiences. The story seemed slow moving at times but was quite descriptive in its full depictions of life and its turmoil in such a community. I enjoyed it immensely and found that I was holding my breath at times, waiting for another catastrophe to occur..

Review below was posted on my blog at https://www.thecuecard.com/books/the-observer/ on Oct. 23, 2023.

This is a bit of a quiet novel about a couple — Julia Carey and Hardy Willis — who move in the 1990s to a tiny town in northeastern Alberta, Canada. He’s a new recruit with Royal Canadian Mounted Police and she’s hired as an editor for the local newspaper The Observer.

Written in the first person from Julia’s perspective, the story starts off a bit slow as they’re meeting people in the town and learning their ways and trying make ends meet to pay bills. Julia feels like an outsider who’s not used to a rural community, though eventually they start making friends especially with the other RCMP members there and their spouses.

Hardy, as a new member, is given much brunt work and is on nights, seeing to wrecks on the highway and other grim tasks. Julia tries to help him cope, but he doesn’t tell her much of what he encounters on the job. The story moves about like little episodes about town, from one thing to the next … with Julia handling sporadic work at the The Observer and becoming friends with a recent widow named Stephanie whose RCMP husband committed suicide. She wants to ask her more about it but holds off for a while.

As the novel goes along, I became more drawn into Hardy and Julia’s lives … as they have a baby and things become harder for Hardy on the job. You come to realize the stress and hardships these police members face as they endure threats, crimes, and victims in bleak circumstances, which take a mental health toll on them. It leads to a scare and down time in their lives that Hardy and Julia must face together. You’ll want to stay tuned to see what happens.

Apparently the novel is based on the author’s own life of her several years in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, (near where years later four RCMP members were killed by a gunman on a rural property in 2005). By novel’s end, I found it pretty affecting and a bit of a haunting look back on one’s life … when some deeply impressionable events happened. It’s a quiet, small-town tale but still manages some poignant ripples. It’s my first novel by Canadian author Marina Endicott novel and won’t be my last.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin RandomHouse for allowing me the ARC to read and review.

I'm torn on this one. I find Endicott's writing almost ethereal at times, which is beautiful, and yet I was also bored. Sometimes I feel as though I read too much fluff and therefore no longer appreciate the beauty of sparse prose. That said, I like the concept of the book, and feel the chosen style (of an observer) works. At times it seemed like too much plot, but then later on things came together and the complexity built. I can see revisiting this title when I am in a different head space to see if it hits me more when I am less busy and near overwhelm.

A book based on a personal experience and journey thru life in a small town as a Canadian officers wife.
I enjoyed the story felt more like a memoir tho.

3.5⭐️

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Told in a memoir format but fiction it’s told from the point of view of the partner of an RCMP officer in a small town in Alberta.

Julia, the observer and narrator, describe her life being the partner of an RCMP officer in a small rural town in Alberta. It took me a bit to get into as she describes day to day life that isn’t very exciting and I kept waiting for something big to happen. Instead the story begins to focus more about the difficult and toll her partner, Hardy, faces being an officer and his struggles with depression caused by his job.

Although I don’t typically love slower books this one was well done.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada and Knopf Canada for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Reading this story was like sitting in the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, listening to my mom reminisce about her life. The highs and the lows and everything in between. Finding there are times a tissue is needed or take an indrawnn breath, or share a hug or a chuckle or two. The author, through Julia's observations draws you into the life of RCMP constables and exposes the stresses, horrors, carnage, and threats they deal with on a daily basis and how all these affect their health and their families. It's a story dealt with genuiness and told with compassion and heart. I enjoyed reading about familiar places around Alberta. Sometimes connections can be made between stories read in the newspapers and what happens within the novel. This novel highlights the strength and fortitude of all first responders as they dig deep to help and serve their communities and to whom we owe our sincere thanks and appreciation.
Thank you very much to Penquin Random House and Art Galley for giving me the opportunity to read this touching story.

The Observer: A Novel by Marina Endicott was a new to me author. I am forever trying to read more Canadian content in my yearly reading challenges. Unfortunately, this novel was a bit of a slow burn and fell flat for me. It could be that I needed a faster paced read at this time. However, the novel seemed to pick up at the 85% finished mark and ended abruptly. The novel itself felt memoir-ish/conversational and I have not ever read this type of style in a non-memoir, and without the chapters breaking it up, it felt to go on and on with whatever the people were doing or going through.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for providing me an advanced reader’s copy with exchange for an honest review.

This novel is written in the style of a memoir, which for some may be enjoyable but for me made it extremely difficult to read. While I do enjoy a nice memoir now and then, this book to me mainly feels like one in the way the book's events are told. It feels like someone just filling you in on things that happened to them in chronological order, rather than a story with a purpose. I found the writing extremely dull and I couldn't bring myself to care about a single character (and there were so many introduced in such quick succession that I couldn't keep track of who's who). I DNFd at 49%, as this book felt entirely like a chore to read.

This was a fasinating read. You get a lot of stories about what police officers do and feel but not a lot of what it's like for their families. The Observer gives us a look at what it's like to be a police officer's spouse and family. I really enjoyed this novel and suggest everyone read it. Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Canada for the advanced copy.

This book was not the mystery I was expecting. Instead it’s a beautifully described reflection of small-town life as the partner of an RCMP officer in the fictional town of Medway.

The story unfurls slowly; I spent the first half patiently tallying up clues and waiting for the crime - haha! Once I realized this was more fictional memoir than mystery, and the narrator’s voice became more confident, I was able to more fully appreciate it.

This book explores themes of commitment, sacrifice, depression/PTSD and what it means to truly stand by a partner who has pledged their life to helping others. It exposes the realities of life in law enforcement and the toll it can take, and also how this amplifies the beauty that can be found in day-to-day living.

As an observer, the narrator shields herself somewhat from the harsh impacts of the tragedies RCMP officers see daily. ‘Observing’ gives her permission to step back and attempt to make the experiences less personal. Though it’s soon clear that partners and family members feel impacts alongside officers - these experiences shape people, families and communities.

The story is particularly impactful and poignant against the backdrop of the Mayerthorpe, AB shooting of four officers in 2005, and the countless officer shootings that have occurred since.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Canada for the ARC.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75307947

The Observer, quasi-fictional recounting of a small rural town's seasonal doings through the eyes of a Mountie's young wife, proceeds toward tragedy with all the inexorable fatality of a comet as seen by those innocent of the scientific explanations.

In this pre-cellphone, pre-internet proto-memoir our narrator is, by her own admission, a out-of-her-depth outsider in Medway (a fictional standin for Mayerthorpe, Alberta). She struggles to grasp the local rhythms of life, the inexplicable codes governing what dish to bring to which potluck. A recurring temporary job at the local paper, The Observer, gives her more insight into the denizens of town and surrounding farms, and hands her secret after secret that can't be spoken of directly, let alone printed in the paper. Mysteries come and go, adding menace but rarely resolved.

The characters are mostly sympathetic, the prose often beautiful, the moments of joy in nature sublime... and yet the darker undercurrents multiply, expanding like the comet's tail in the night sky. The sense of impending doom thickens page by page, chapter by chapter, recreating the nigh-breathless tension of life in an RCMP household, of an RCMP career, and in a town where too many assholes have been tolerated, too many secrets swept under for far too long.

Something has to snap. You're just not sure what, or who, or how bad it's going to go.

There's no emotional catharsis here for the reader, just as there was not for the very real townspeople who lived through, and still live with, not only the Mayerthorpe tragedy but the myriad dark currents that swirl beneath the idyllic surface of small rural towns.