Award winning New Zealand crime author Charity Norman’s Home Truths declares itself as a crime novel from its cold open. A woman is on trial, the jury are returning to deliver their verdict, there has been a murder, perhaps. But once the narrative begins it is clear that what Norman is interested in is not the crime itself (whatever it was) but the insidious social disease that led to it. And in doing so, Norman revisits the traumatic and uncertain times that accompanied the COVID epidemic.
Home Truths opens with a tragedy. It is the morning of Heidi’s 13th birthday in late 2019 and she wants her father Scott to himself. This desire will inadvertently lead to the death of Scott’s brother Nick who had an intellectual disability and diabetes. In trying to make sense of Nick’s death, Scott will go down the conspiracy theory rabbit-hole, joining a group of Truthers who believe the world is run by a secret cabal. The advent of Covid supercharges Scott’s beliefs and leads him down a dark path. Much of the book is narrated in hindsight by Scott’s wife Livia, who struggles to accommodate Scott and his shifting belief system, but there are point of view sections from Heidi and Scott himself.
Home Truths tackles the more sinister and dangerous side of the internet: conspiracy theories and the way people can be drawn in and manipulated. Norman explores the ways in which influencers draw people in and then lead them further and further away from reality. While the focus here is on health conspiracies and the impact of Covid, the story could just as easily be about the QAnon phenomenon.
Norman once again shows her ability to depict ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Scott is not a bad person, he is struggling to come to terms with the death of his brother and that makes him vulnerable. Livia wants to believe that this is just a phase, but does not have the language, knowledge or tools to counter the influence on Scott. And Heidi is a teenager racked with guilt, going through her own personal hell.
The idea of the cold open is to hold readers in suspense – when is the crime coming? What is the story? And Norman does get there, more than justifying this book’s tag as crime fiction. But by then the court case is less about the justice system and more about what happens when the power and methods of internet influencers are exposed to the light of day.
Home Truths is a chilling reminder of how easy it is to manipulated into believing. How social media algorithms can lead people slowly away from reality, particularly when the world seems to be out of their control. Norman effectively takes readers into this modern scourge, exploring how influencers prey on the fears of otherwise rational people and how hard it is for loved ones to battle once the belief has taken hold.
Home Truths by Charity Norman
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