Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder by Kerryn Mayne

Publisher's Synopsis

Lenny Marks is good at not remembering.

She has spent the last twenty years not thinking about the day her mother left her when she was still a child. Her stepfather’s parting words, however, remain annoyingly unforgettable: 'You did this.'
Now thirty-seven, Lenny prefers contentment and order over the unreliability of happiness and the messiness of relationships. She fills her days teaching at the local primary school, and her nights playing Scrabble with her pretend housemate, watching reruns of Friends and rearranging her thirty-six copies of The Hobbit.
Recently though, if only to appease her beloved foster-mum, Lenny has set herself the goal of ‘getting a life’.
Then, out of the blue, a letter arrives from the Adult Parole Board. And when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel.

Worse, she starts to remember . . .

My Review of Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder

This is a delightful story that tracks the fortunes of Lenny Marks who is a survivor of childhood abuse and has forged a life for herself working as a primary school teacher. Her whole life revolves around a series of coping mechanisms as she continues to deal with traumatic experiences she suffered more than 20 years ago as an 11 year old.

She lives alone, enjoys arranging and rearranging her collection of 36 volumes of The Hobbit, plays regular games of Scrabble with her imaginary opponent Monica, and watches endless reruns of Friends on Netflix. She’s content and prefers to be left alone, although she has high hopes of becoming friends with Amy and Ashleigh, a couple of prep teachers at the school where she works.

Her ordered life is disturbed by the arrival of a letter from the parole board which serves to bring back floods of memories from her past. Under threat of losing the simple orderly lifestyle she has long enjoyed, Lenny slowly begins to do some of the things she has always shied away from. Things like socialising with others. It’s the kind of thing her foster mother has been trying to get her to do for years and it’s a slow and difficult process.

At first glance Lenny Marks is an intelligent, diligent primary school teacher who is quiet and unassuming and very content with her ordered lifestyle. Her idiosyncrasies are fun, a harmless quirk that makes her unique and unusual. But as we get to know her, there is a deeper, sadder and darker undercurrent to her. Her personality has been shaped by a turbulent past, a lot of which has been repressed. 

We slowly become more aware of her past moving from vague and enigmatic references before becoming more sharply defined, giving cause for unease and concern. The big question we’re faced with is how Lenny will deal with the many new challenges she’s suddenly forced into facing. Some of these challenges are good, others are not but there is a magical quality to the way in which she grows and prospers. 

What begins as a seemingly pleasant account of a happy young woman becomes a story of triumph over adversity. 

To be honest, this is not the type of story that I go looking for, but there are so many high points that I’m really glad I stumbled onto it. Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder is a richly devised story that deals with a difficult subject extremely thoughtfully. All of the main characters are given great depth and can be easily related back to real life individuals.

This is a quality debut novel that offers up the occasional twist that serves to load up on uncertainty and danger along with all of the positive aspects that ultimately shine through. Very much highly recommended.