I was contacted by the author to review this novel and she kindly provided my review copy – thank you to Alison Jean Lester for my book, ‘Glide’ coaster and postcard. This has not influenced my review – as always, opinions are my own.
I’ll admit I didn’t fully know what to expect from this novel. I knew it was a study of human relationships, had some psychological drama and also featured photographs alongside the text – all of which intrigued me!
The story is one of a marriage with some pretty entrenched issues. The book opens with Leo, our main protagonist, preparing a cake for his wife’s birthday. She – Liv – is due to arrive on a flight from Norway imminently but, instead, the knock at the door belongs to her half brother, Morten.
Leo is rightfully confused as Liv hasn’t mentioned him before and things take a sinister turn when Liv doesn’t arrive on her scheduled flight. When she does eventually return, things have changed forever and some long-buried secrets are due an airing…
The book is a fascinating insight into human relationships and psychological trauma – Lester’s research into the latter has created a plausible and realistic explanation for Liv’s behaviour and an interesting take on memory suppression. This also provides tension to the novel as the reader is kept waiting for the secrets to surface.
Lester has also produced a range of believable characters. In particular, Leo strikes the reader as someone thrown into a situation beyond his understanding and not of his making. Our sympathies lie with him – although he too has some major secrets in his past.
Liv is perhaps less sympathetically presented, although this is partially because we see less of her in the novel and – when she does return from Norway – she is credibly distant due to her issues.
The third wheel in the relationship and scenario – Liv’s half brother, Morten – is also an interesting character. He is personable, lively, larger-than-life…and strangely sinister even from his first odd arrival at Leo and Liv’s home. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these characters and finding out their secrets.
The Norwegian connection was a huge bonus for me in this book – Liv’s family is from Norway and there were some lovely touches that added credibility to the characters. Snippets of Norwegian, place names and observations on social difference between Leo (American) and Morten (Norwegian) pepper the book and I loved these as Norway is a country for which I have much affection and a little knowledge.
A review of this book wouldn’t be complete without discussion of the excellent abstract photographs that feature throughout the book, provided by Andrew Gurnett. I thoroughly enjoyed the black and white images alongside the text; they provide less in the way of overt illustration of the text and more a way of enhancing the cognitive dissonance experienced by characters in the novel.
The images were often unnerving or sinister, sometimes puzzling – but always eye-catching and thought-provoking. I did spend quite a long time looking at these because Gurnett’s biography at the back of the book references the ‘unintentional beauty of the everyday […]the functional, forgotten and discarded’ – so I obviously had to go back and look again to see if I could work out what I was looking at!
This is an interesting and engaging novel and one that I would recommend. I’ve deliberately been a bit vague in terms of plot because this is a book that you need to read for yourself to appreciate the characterisation and twists. If you like stories packed with secrets, lies and buried family trauma, this is one for you.
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This sounds like a mysterious story and I love the Norwegian connection too!
This sounds really fascinating! I love that it includes actual photos in the book too. What a cool touch.