The Watcher by Caroline Eriksson

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by AmazonCrossing on September 18, 2018

The Watcher, like many other thrillers built on domestic drama, is the story of people who seem to be behaving badly. This one is a bit different in that it challenges the reader to decide whether the primary narrator is perceiving and interpreting unfolding events accurately. Unfortunately, the novel’s resolution is not as interesting as its setup.

Elena is the author of a successful thriller who hasn’t written a word in two years. She is separated from her husband Peter and spends her time moping and gazing out the window rather than living, although she tells us that she’s always been more an observer of life than a participant. Most of the novel is narrated from Elena’s point of view, although some chapters are told from the perspective of an unfaithful husband and some from the point of view of a woman who plans to kill her husband.

Considering how much drama she has in her own life, it can’t be healthy for Elena to take on another family’s drama. Yet alone in her home, Elena becomes obsessed with the neighbors across the street who seem to be having (to put it gently) domestic problems. Through Google, she learns that they are Philip and Veronica Storm. She soon meets their son, a young teen named Leo, who wants to be a writer. Leo seems eager to strike up a friendship and Elena, listening to his stories about his parents, seems to sense a source of material she can use to make her own stories.

Elena’s curiosity and snooping — where does Leo’s mother go during the days when she’s supposedly lying in bed? what is Leo's father saying to the woman he's apparently meeting on the sly? why is there a knife under the Storms' marital bed? — leads her to fear that something bad will happen. Can she do anything to prevent it? Should she do anything, given that her suspicions may be unfounded and, in any event, result from invading the privacy of Leo’s family? She fears, with good reason, that anyone to whom she voices her suspicion will question her mental health. The reader might do the same when Elena starts to wonder whether the novel she is writing is in some way influencing the actions of her neighbors.

One of the novel’s pleasures, in fact, is the challenge that the reader faces in deciding whether Elena is just too unbalanced to have a reliable perception of events. Maybe someone is in danger. Maybe Elena is imagining the danger, creating a greater drama than the evidence supports. Caroline Eriksson builds suspicion that the danger might not involve Philip or Veronica but a secondary character, like Peter or Elena’s sister, both of whom play tangential roles for much of the story.

While most of the novel is told from Elena’s perspective, occasional passages are narrated by two unnamed characters. Again, the reader makes assumptions about who those narrators might be, but those assumptions must be reconsidered as the story progresses. Eriksson’s deft misdirection and her reliance on a potentially unreliable narrator are the novel’s virtues.

At the same time, while the novel builds to a surprising moment, the ending seems a bit tame, given the dramatic buildup. My reaction was more “huh” than “wow.” The final pages are determinedly optimistic, as if Eriksson thought it was important to let the reader know that Elena is a strong woman and that there’s no need to worry about another critical character. That seems like a betrayal of the darkness the precedes those pages. There’s also a message in the final paragraph that comes across as a writer force-feeding a dish of self-help to the reader. So while The Watcher has its rewards, it also comes with a bit of disappointment at the end.

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