Square Peg

by Vivienne Tuffnell

She’d seen faces like that before, but on the television, in films and in the history books. The faces of fanatics, cold and blind to all reason staring back at her. Chloe is a square peg in an increasingly uncomfortable round hole. Brought up by her wildly unconventional grandmother, she’s a true free spirit and has never learned to pull her punches. She’s just married trainee Church of England clergyman Clifford, and is living at the theological college and trying to figure out what’s going on around her. She’s had very little connection with formal religion, and has a talent for stepping on all sorts of emotional land-mines with the wives of the other ordinands. That would probably be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that her grandmother has inconsiderately died, and left her a house full of exotic souvenirs of her days as a travelling doctor, instructions to track down her father and sister, and what everyone else regards as a really bad attitude. She’s also lost her job, her temper, but not the will to live. Chloe’s life begins to unravel in ways she could never have imagined as she tries to understand her own background by setting out to find out what became of her sister and father. But trying to integrate her uncompromising approach to life brings her into escalating conflict with the other women of the college, leaving her isolated and friendless. In Clifford's final year of training, Chloe meets the arty, anarchic Isobel and together they concoct a plan whereby the irrepressible Isobel becomes the mole amid the college wives and they start to undermine and sabotage the status quo with a series of practical jokes and psychological warfare that has terrible consequences for Chloe when things go horribly wrong.

424 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2014

Reviews

[S.C. Skillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story in which a sense of fear gains momentum; the author conveys an atmosphere of menace within a close community, as a vendetta builds, and I wondered what the women were going to do to Chloe, a person they fear as "different" from themselves, and therefore a threat.
Chloe's "difference" consists of the fact that although she's married to a trainee Christian priest, she is open to different faith systems and forms of spirituality, as evidenced by the artefacts in her home. I found this story engaging because I could identify with Chloe, in regard to her independent spirit and her interests, though she is rather confrontational, very quick to be smart-tongued and challenging to the people she meets.
The end of the story was slightly unsatisfying, as I felt the major issue of the novel - intolerance among a group of evangelical Anglicans - was left to just melt away. I would have liked the characters to open up about what lay behind their fear and suspicion. Perhaps the author feels this is integral to a narrow, orthodox religious outlook. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the novel, found it gripping, and Vivienne Tuffnell takes a very interesting angle on this subject.

[Paul Trembling · Rating 5 out of 5]

At it's heart, this is about the importance of being yourself. And about how difficult that can be. Especially when 'yourself' doesn't really fit into the place where you are, and doesn't match other people's expectations. Being a square peg in a round hole can be a very challenging situation - and that's exactly what the main character, Chloe, is. A strong minded, independent young women, she finds that being herself puts her in constant conflict with other people around her. Does she give in and conform, or does she fight back?

All the characters here are well drawn, but Chloe is shown to us with remarkable depth and clarity - her conflicted feelings, her strengths and weaknesses, her hidden past and present struggles. She is an immensely engaging character, who comes vividly to life in the first few paragraphs and who kept me fascinated and absorbed throughout the story. She's somebody who I wish was real, so that I could meet her - though that meeting might not be very comfortable for both of us!