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The Indulgence

“The Indulgence is a gripping, powerful read. The protagonist, actress Lucinda Yates, is a compellingly original character, wonderfully impossible to categorize. She is articulate and self-reflecting; her sexuality is in free flow; she belongs to no camp. Yet she is caught in the compulsion of a ruinous, limiting relationship. Hers is an heroic struggle to escape the tragedy of falling in love with someone who does not have the capacity to return that love.” – Juliet Stevenson, British stage and screen actress (“Truly, Madly, Deeply” and “Bend it Like Beckham”; Lawrence Olivier Award, Best Actress)

 “The book is wonderful, full of elegance, and the narrative—not to mention the writing—so powerful. Such story-telling. A triumph.”– Hugh Brody, filmmaker/author of Maps and Dreams & The Other Side of Eden

“This is a powerful, blistering novel, a startling premise, a page turner, beautifully writen, a novel that will remain with me for a long time.”– Gillian Stern, U.K. editor

With The Indulgence (Tellwell Talent, 2019), Ms. Pinder has produced her most controversial novel to date. Early reviews are deservedly elevating this unconventional legal tour de force into the Pantheon of great courtroom masterpieces like Kafka’s The Trial, Turow’s Presumed Innocent, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Lucinda Yates is a renowned Canadian actress who begins a passionate, yet obsessive, affair with a beautiful journalist, Eva Ryder. The intensity of their unbridled relationship—called by Oscar Wilde “the love that dare not speak its name”—casts Lucinda into a downward and dark, disintegrating spiral. Blinded by what she wants to see in her lover or just not able to see the evil that lies behind a beautiful mask—a theme that emerged in her previous novel, Bring Me One of Everything—Lucinda must face her own gross indecency trial, charged with the forced abduction of a minor—Eva’s own 13-year-old daughter. Ms. Pinder describes a key turning point of the trial:

“Lucinda’s private passions become the daily fare of the courtroom, yet she steadfastly refuses to take the witness stand. As detail upon detail is revealed of her fatal attractions, the question looms whether Yates is ever going to exonerate herself, or if she can. The tactics of the prosecutor force her out.”

These last three words lead us to Leslie Hall Pinder’s fitting metaphor for the trial.

The bullfight symbolizes the multi-leveled elements of the trial. Each character, every moment within the corrida, even the movements of the cape, correspond to specific elements within the trial. In the bullring, the safest place for the bull is known as the guerencia, where he feels at home, his back is against the wall, and he is the most dangerous and almost impossible to kill. It is the duty of the matador to force the bull out of this safe place with clever tactics; in this case it is Lucinda’s refusal to take the stand that requires the same strategies, in this case one would call it cunning, by the prosecutor to make the defendant change her position. The person in charge, el Presidente in the bullfight, and the judge in the trial, can control the process and even the outcome. El Presidente can award an ear to the matador for a brave fight or skillfully “citing the bull” and moving his body over the horns, thrusting the sword for the kill. In very rare cases, el Presidente can even grant the bull a pardon, an indulto, an indulgence. So, too, can a judge. And, yes, a very skillful novelist can do the same. With great style and skillfully citing her audience, Leslie Hall Pinder equals or exceeds the work of the most prominent writers of courtroom dramas.

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LESLIE HALL PINDER grew up in Canada’s prairies, studied English at the University of Saskatchewan and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. She received her law degree from the University of British Columbia and has practiced law in Vancouver, B.C. since 1977. In her first job at a large, prestigious firm she was told that because she was a woman, she had to enter the firm’s exclusive men’s club by way of the servants’ entrance. She went through the front door. Her employment ended. She was a courtroom litigator for 28 years, representing indigenous peoples, in addition to publishing her novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. She is the author of widely acclaimed novels: Under the House, On Double Tracks (nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award), and Bring Me One of Everything (which received a starred Review in “Publisher’s Weekly”). She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.