T
he Dark Circle is a compelling read. It tells us the story of twin siblings Lenny and Miriam Lynskey, who are diagnosed with tuberculosis and shuttled to a sanitarium in Kent where they are subject to idle days and wondering if they’ll fall victim to a diseases that’s traditionally fatal. The year is 1949 and the NHS is standing shakily tall in it’s shiny new glory. The story weaves around this inner circle of patients, people who would have never met normally, due to various issues of racism, class and circumstances, but in the book they form relationships that seem to cross all borders.
I sometimes felt that the narrative was a bit slightly too earnest in it’s way that we must help everyone, every way we can. Not something that I disagree with, that I felt the point was made a a few too many times. But this is nothing to quibble about really.
Ultimately The Dark Circle is a thoughtful and well-written book: funny and revealing, it is a novel about what it means to treat people how you wish to be treated.
About Linda Grant
Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984.
Her first book, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution was published in 1993. The Dark Circle is her seventh novel.
To find our more about Linda click here.
To find out more about the Baileys Prize click here.
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