Mark Sutton

The resort does what's called the fogging where they spray pesticides throughout the resort in order to make it so the bugs and mosquitoes don't bother the guests who are paying top dollar for the accommodation.

Clara has fallen asleep in the bed and didn't get the message that she shouldn't be in her room.

and so suddenly wakes up with a dark cloud of pesticides.

She's unable to see.

She's concerned about her ability to breathe.

She's concerned about what it might do to her skin.

She can't see.

She has had pre-existing medical conditions that she believes may be exacerbated by certain chemicals, and it's an extremely traumatic experience for her to get caught in this fogging.

And then a moment that the novel sort of hinges on is that when she tries to talk to Tom about it, his response is, oh, that's terrible.

Anyway, and her sort of trauma does not match his reaction at all.

He doesn't get it.

And part of it comes from his non-confrontational nature where Tom

It would almost be worse for him to put in a complaint about it or yell at the people who run the resort or allow it to ruin what he is hoping will be a relaxing holiday.

And it's almost as though if we address this problem, then it will become more than he thinks it is.

And it's from there that Clara, as Kate said...

retreats into her mode of dealing with these tensions which is to fall silent which causes tom to sort of retreat to his other corner in his stubborn refusal to address what may or may not be plaguing clara and suddenly we find we've got our main characters in a resort in bali essentially refusing to communicate with each other whilst on holiday

And this is one of the frustrating parts of this quite well-drawn character is this mix of his judgmental side and his inability to deal with the problems in his life.

No, I agree.

In fact, what we haven't addressed is that the characters are very well drawn and at times there is humour throughout the book.

I also think as someone who is the same age as these characters in the book, and we're starting to see a lot more books come out about...