Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Frank Wynne – published 2024

A French family, father, mother and 9 year old son, are making their way to their father’s old house in the mountains of the Jura, but this is no holiday. We get a drip feed through flashbacks of the situation they are in and the image of a mountain cabin idyll soon disappears.

The mother is an alcoholic, addicted to painkillers and spends her time reading romance novels; she also turns out to be pregnant. The father has included a gun in his backpack, he is moody and behaves irrationally, reflecting on life with his own father. Maybe the mysterious Uncle Tony will arrive.
Much of this is seen through the eyes of the young son, to whom the motives of the adults are incomprehensible. This element of uncertainty, along with the gothic abandoned house, give the novel an eeriness, and a sense of dread.

Dealing with issues of domestic violence, and without moving into the territory of horror Del Amo generates a sense of tension from the best of that genre, and maintains it to a satisfying finale.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5