Into the Darkest Corner

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The story was partly inspired by my work as a police intelligence analyst. At the time I was producing a quarterly report on violent crime and as part of this I read a lot of accounts of domestic abuse. I was guilty of having very fixed ideas about violence in the home and the sort of people who were victims of it, and this stereotype was challenged in every way by the reports I was analysing. I’d always thought of domestic abuse as something that happened to ‘other people’, but it affects many couples and families from every part of society and is often very well hidden. In the book, Cathy’s friends don’t realise what is going on right in front of them, partly because they have no experience of violence – it’s something that happens to ‘other people’. The novel is structured so that the story of Catherine and Lee’s developing relationship in 2003 (pre-trial) is told in alongside (in alternating scenes) the story of Catherine in 2007 (post-trial). It took me a while to get into this structure, mostly because I felt I already knew how the 2003 storyline was going to turn out, and I wanted to get on with the rest of the story. I soon found myself liking Haynes’ choice of structure however — the scenes of Catherine being carefree and flirting with the handsome, mysterious Lee are especially heart-wrenching when contrasted with the perennially frightened Catherine in 2007, who suffers from OCD and practically has to be dragged to the office Christmas party.

Into The Darkest Corner | Elizabeth Haynes

Into the Darkest Corner has two timelines: past and present of Catherine Bailey. Cathy used to be a party girl: going out with friends every weekend, drinking and just having fun... till she met Lee. 4 years later Cathy is not a girl she used to be. She is traumatized, anxious girl with PTSD and OCD. What happened to her during those 4 years? A very impressive first novel; it tells the story of Catherine who starts off as a lively, fun loving party girl until she meets Lee.”

Haynes does an amazing job of putting us in Catherine’s frame of mind. It was terrifying to see Lee’s controlling tendencies escalate, to the point that even when Catherine realizes how much she needs to escape this relationship, it’s already too late. Several times in the margins, I’ve written “how to escape?” The story at times felt claustrophobic — Catherine’s experience of being trapped by Lee felt so real that even I, who knew he’d be convicted in 2005, saw no way out. So on one level I’m completely convinced that you can’t get everything you want or need from one person. To assume that your partner can satisfy all of your intellectual/emotional/physical needs is setting yourself up for failure. From its uncompromising prologue – a young woman being bludgeoned to death in a ditch – Haynes’s powerful account of domestic violence is disquieting, yet unsensationalist.” Into the Darkest Corner is a difficult book to read, and I mean that as a testament to how amazing it is. Haynes has crafted a terrifying, emotional, claustrophobic story of abuse. My copy (photo on the left) is filed with Post-It notes and marginal scribbles, mostly comments like “Argh! You liar!” referring to Lee. Rarely have I marked up a book so much — Darkest Corner has provoked that much from me.

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes | Waterstones Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes | Waterstones

Catherine is an outgoing and confident woman, enjoying her weekends going out on the town with her friends, meeting guys and having fun. Then she meets Lee, a gorgeous and charming man who her friends all love. A few years later we meet Catherine again. Single, she has no friends, and her life is consumed by OCD and anxiety. What has happened to her?⁣ But what begins as flattering attentiveness and passionate sex turns into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon learns there is a darker side to Lee. His increasingly erratic, controlling behaviour becomes frightening, but no one believes her when she shares her fears. Increasingly isolated and driven into the darkest corner of her world, a desperate Catherine plans a meticulous escape. I have rarely detested a character as much as I do Lee. He’s just creepy and controlling. For example, he switches around the knives and forks in Catherine’s kitchen drawer. When Catherine demands to know why he did it, he replies, “I just wanted you to know I was looking out for you.” Catherine admits she feels uncomfortable without knowing why, and that was one point when I wanted to just yell at her — how can you not know why that creeps you out? Talk about the heebie-jeebies! To Catherine’s credit, she does ask him not to do it again instead of just letting it alone.

Into the Darkest Corner

Lccn 2011431293 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9760 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-2000040 Openlibrary_edition For me, if the relationship is bad - if there’s no trust or if outside of the bedroom it all feels strained and lonely - then for me good sex means little. On one level, it raises some really worthwhile conversations about consent. The crazy boyfriend turns up at 3am and Catherine opens her door to him. They have sex, it was rough, she was in pain during - and afterwards - and at no point did she say no. Was it rape? Certainly for me the presence of sex - regardless of the degrees of satisfaction - is a dealbreaker. While I’m sure there are relationships that are are functional - are satisfying - sans sex, I’m not particularly interested in one.