Publishing year: 2017
In the prologue of this book the narrator is in a women’s prison in Yorkshire.
She claims she is a model inmate and as a consequence she is in charge of the governor’s garden. We don’t know who the woman is, but the reason she is in prison is because she hurt another woman.
Then the book alternates its chapters between Bo and Alice. Bo is a relatively successful author. She is married to Gus, a man twenty-two years her senior, and they have two young daughters, Lola and Maggie. Now they live in the Lake District because of Bo’s work, but they used to live in Oxford. Gus is retired, and it is Bo who looks after the house and the children. Bo also teaches courses in creative writing, and the next one is in Northumberland. The course is in expert fiction writing, and to be admitted, the applicants must submit a piece of writing. Bo is impressed by a piece by a woman called Alice Dark, who writes about her mother dying and her visiting her many years after her abandonment.
Alice is twenty-six and lives in Brighton with her boyfriend Jake. They live like in a communal house even though Alice has her own bedsit. Alice is a university graduate and used to work in an office, but whens he met Jake, she quit. Jake is quite unconventional; he is a painter, but he is not very serious in his commitments. What attracted Alice is this unconventional way of life. The truth is that Jake is a waste and can’t bother to use his talent. Alice works in a language school which pays peanuts, so she can’t even afford her rent. When she gets the letter approving her admission to the course, she is thrilled, but she has no money for the train fare. So she has to sell the bracelet her mother gave her long ago. Alice is worried about the course as she fears that everybody else will be better. Anna, her friend, who is a police officer, reassures her that she will have nothing to worry about. What worries Anna is that Alice is wasting her time and energy with someone like Jake, but Alice won’t hear anybody maligning Jake even though she knows it is the truth.
Interesting start. I am curious to see what will happen when Bo and Alice finally meet. And who is the woman in prison? Alice or Bo? And why will one of them end up in prison?
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