Diana Reid’s third novel, SIGNS OF DAMAGE (Ultimo Press 2025) is structured in an original way. Over six days of the week – Monday to Saturday – Reid creates a narrative that interweaves between two timelines: a Monday in 2008, and a Monday in 2024; a Tuesday in 2008 and a Tuesday in 2024, and so on. This provides the reader with a looping cycle focussing on two important incidents that form the backbone of the story.
The week in 2008 sees the Kelly family – dad Bruce, mum Vanessa, daughters Skye and Anika, along with Anika’s friend Cass – travel from Australia to an idyllic villa in the south of France. It seems the perfect holiday. Bruce’s old friend Harry arrives, with his ‘ward’ Sam in tow. All the young people seem to get along fairly well, although there are the usual arguments, temptations, sibling rivalries, flirtations, jealousies and occasional ennui. Next door resides the somewhat famous writer, Robert, who often joins the family for meals.
Their holiday is briefly interrupted by what could have been a terrible tragedy – Cass, only 13, goes missing, although she is discovered several hours later seemingly unharmed. A would-be tragedy luckily averted.
The week set in 2024 begins with the funeral of one of the Kelly family members where Cass collapses, again with no visible signs of injury. Only a few days later, it is Skye’s wedding, and so almost the entire cast of characters comes together at various times during that week, first for the funeral and then for the wedding.
But the present and the past begin to collide and coalesce. The book is written from multiple points of view, so the reader is privy to the thoughts of each of the characters (which may be hidden from other characters). Secrets long hidden rise to the surface; memories of events of their time in France diverge and converge; people begin to doubt their own recollections of that time, and their loyalties and grudges held since.
With themes of familial relationships, trauma, memories, resentments, fear, suspicion and regret, the novel most boldly explores psychological trauma responses and moral ambiguities. It examines the understanding we have of the motivations and behaviour of others (or the understanding we think we have) and how that affects our long-held (sometimes quietly and in secret) views about what kind of person is who we think we know, and why.
While this is an emotional book written with sensitivity and nuance, I did not feel it landed as well with me as Reid’s first book, Love and Virtue. I found the ending a bit rushed and felt it could have been resolved differently. It is an unexpected and shocking ending although the enormity of it was diluted due to the high stakes of the entirety of the book. Nevertheless, Reid is a talented writer who confronts interesting issues and her style of writing is very appealing to those who enjoy a domestic drama with unresolved questions and a tense build-up of suspense, especially as the reader knows the perspectives of all the individual characters while they remain opaque between each other.