Dear Debbie: the advice columnist ran out of advice for herself

The adviser runs out of answers at home

Debbie is skilled at listening to other people's problems. Distance helps. Her own life comes with affection, embarrassment and the strong wish for one particular explanation to be true. Expertise does not give anybody immunity from the confusion that arrives with personal stakes.

I like that contradiction. We ask people who work with others' crises to display permanent mastery over their own. A therapist must never panic, a counsellor must never misjudge a relationship and a smart woman must detect every lie before breakfast. What an exhausting shift schedule. Debbie's problem is not that she has forgotten the tools. She can recognize a prudent response and choose another. That is more revealing than reducing her to a woman who “went crazy.” Listen to how she justifies a decision before sticking a label on her.

Debbie has spent years answering letters from women whose husbands make their lives harder. Her advice column rewards the appearance of a woman who can identify a problem and propose a sensible next step. Losing that job while her own family grows harder to read is a nasty turn of the screw. I like the irony because it is specific: the expert has practiced giving other people clarity, yet clarity is not a household appliance she can bring home.

Patience is very useful to the people who receive it

The letters Debbie receives collect mistreatment, disrespect and frustration. One complaint might be dismissed as an unfortunate marriage; many start to show how much women are expected to endure quietly. I get irritated when “being sensible” is praised because it leaves everyone else's routine undisturbed. A peaceful household sometimes has one unpaid employee absorbing the cost.

That is why a protagonist who refuses to keep smiling has appeal. Fiction lets readers imagine a response more dramatic than anything they would sensibly do on a weekday. Enjoying that fantasy is not a commitment to use it as relationship advice. But I draw a line between refusing to submit and deciding other people must now submit to you. Revenge can begin as a demand for dignity and end up using the same logic of control it claimed to resist.

Advice to remain patient is very cheap when the person delivering it is not the one living with the insult, the fear or the extra work. Debbie has heard enough variations to recognize the pattern. The uncomfortable part is watching her decide that recognition licenses her response. I can understand why a woman stops being agreeable without automatically cheering every decision she makes next. Anger may be justified; its itinerary still needs inspecting.

Cooper's phone promises certainty it cannot deliver

Debbie installs a tracking app on her husband Cooper's phone. A dot on a map can tell her where the device went. It cannot explain what happened there, why he went or what the relationship has become. Technology can multiply facts while trust remains in pieces.

I recognize the temptation. If I check one more time, perhaps I will understand; if I understand, perhaps I can relax. Surveillance often produces the opposite result. Each answer creates a new detail to verify, and soon the conversation is really between a frightened person and a screen. Debbie may have reason to doubt Cooper. That does not make tracking a cure for doubt or a harmless gesture simply because we are on her side of the story.

The tracking app on Cooper's phone produces movement and suspicion, not an explanation of his motives. A dot on a map can tell Debbie where a device is; it cannot tell her what a marriage means. I know the temptation to treat a screen as the one witness that cannot be manipulated. McFadden gets tension out of the gap between data and interpretation, especially when Debbie is already ready to believe that everyone in her house has a separate agenda.

Her daughters have lives outside Debbie's worry

The daughters' unusual behaviour adds to Debbie's sense that her house has become unfamiliar. It also reminds me that children, especially teenagers, do not exist solely as problems for a parent's narrative. They may have reasons Debbie cannot see because motherhood does not grant total access to a person's mind.

Concern can be justified and an intrusion can still be an intrusion. Debbie's fatigue is real, but it does not erase everybody else's freedom. The shifting perspectives are useful here: we can care about a woman who feels excluded without treating her account as the full map of the family. If every daughter is reduced to evidence of Mom's bad week, the book loses the people who could most challenge her interpretation.

Her teenage daughters add to the strain, but they are not simply two more items on a list of things going wrong for their mother. I wanted their choices to remain their own, even when Debbie is frightened or disappointed by them. A parent can be right to worry and wrong about what the worry means. The novel becomes sharper when family loyalty stops functioning as a blank check for surveillance, secrecy or control.

The dark humour lets us laugh and then checks the laugh

Revenge in a novel can feel delightful when somebody unpleasant receives a wildly disproportionate response. For a moment, the accounts seem balanced. McFadden knows how to give us that moment. I am not above enjoying it. I like seeing a woman stop smiling while other people trample her life.

The more interesting question arrives afterward. Did I enjoy an effective comic scene, or did I silently approve its harm because the target was annoying? A protagonist can make me laugh and still need to answer for what she does. Debbie's voice is strongest when it can carry that disagreement. An antiheroine surrounded only by people conveniently designed to deserve punishment becomes less dangerous and, frankly, less interesting.

What did not work for me

Debbie's justified anger can be treated as a universal permit too easily. Her profession and the letters she has read put us close to her before we evaluate her choices. The narrative works when it lets readers stay close while saying no to something she does. It weakens when the target of a revenge scene exists only to deserve a clever punishment.

I also want Cooper and the daughters to remain people beyond Debbie's suspicions. Her viewpoint can be intense without being complete. The tracking bothers me especially. It might bring information, but it cannot rebuild trust. If the book presents surveillance as a tidy answer, it abandons the more uncomfortable question it opened: what right does fear give us to follow someone, and what exactly do we know once we have?

Some reversals arrive with the tidy timing McFadden likes, and I could see a few of the genre gears turning. I also wanted more space for the fallout of particular choices instead of moving quickly to the next satisfying correction. The fun of a revenge thriller can make consequences seem like paperwork best left for Monday. Debbie's story works better when the book lets the bill come due for the people who did not get to choose the plan.

Debbie knows the language of justification

Years of giving advice mean Debbie can structure an argument. She knows how to identify an injustice, choose a telling detail and make a response sound persuasive. Readers can enjoy that voice and still examine what it leaves out. A good explanation is not proof of innocence; sometimes it is what lets a person continue doing something they would rather not name.

The letters may help her recognize a pattern in women's experiences. They may also encourage her to interpret every new event through the explanation she already wants. I am interested in that line. Listening to other women can make an injustice visible. Using their stories as confirmation of your own worst suspicion is another move. To read the humour well, I would separate emotional release from moral judgment. We can laugh at fictional excess without pretending to be above revenge or applauding every action under its banner.

Who should open Debbie's letter

I recommend this to readers who enjoy a narrator with sharp words and questionable decisions, domestic suspicion and comedy with teeth. You do not need to read The Housemaid or The Boyfriend first. Debbie has her own story.

If you want an exemplary heroine, calm emotional repair or realistic advice for leaving a harmful relationship, adjust expectations. This novel uses revenge and surveillance to build suspense; it is not a service column in disguise. After finishing, I would ask what Debbie would write to a reader who described doing exactly what she did. Would she change the advice, or just change the label from control to care because this time she understands the person in the mirror?

My rating: 4 out of 5, with the advice column under review

I give Dear Debbie four stars for a voice that lets me discuss patience, surveillance and the distance between justice and revenge while still enjoying the dark jokes. Her job makes the contradiction clear: she knows what a sensible solution sounds like and has decreasing interest in saying it.

The missing star is for the resistance I wanted the revenge fantasy to meet. A sharp line should not acquit an action, and an irritating target should still be a person. Debbie spent years asking other women to be reasonable. Now she gets to discover what remains of that advice when patience stops feeling like an answer. I will listen. I am keeping the right to argue back.

My four stars belong to the wit and the prickly question beneath it: how far can a sympathetic grievance carry an unsympathetic act? I do not want Debbie smoothed into a role model or flattened into a warning. Her column taught her to speak with certainty. Her life asks her to live with what certainty cannot settle. That is more entertaining, and considerably less comfortable, than a simple fantasy of giving every fool exactly what he deserves.