Jennifer Johnston is adept at economy. Here is a short novel in which the eight characters are introduced one by one, with minimum fuss — some dialogue, a brief reference by someone else — and their complex relationships obliquely revealed. Complex indeed are these connections. ‘I am gay, bent, queer, homosexual, call it what you will,’ says Donough, coming out to his mother Stephanie. Sexual identity lies at the heart of the narrative — who is inclined to what, and with whom. By the end, four of the eight are defined as gay, bent, call it what you will, and the past is floodlit, with all its confusions and deceptions.
Stephanie’s ex-husband Henry is in hospital, recovering from a car accident in which the driver, his wife, was killed. His memory is riddled with holes, into the largest of which has vanished all recollection of this woman, Caroline, who is effectively the ninth character, absent but looming, like du Maurier’s Rebecca.
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