Olivia Cole on Victoria Hislop’s second novel
Married to a permanently well-lunched Englishman, Sonia Cameron, the half-Spanish heroine of Victoria Hislop’s second novel The Return, seeks escapism — first in a local dance class (to which she becomes unexpectedly addicted) and, more compellingly, in a chapter of her family history by which she becomes distracted whilst in Granada improving her salsa.
If the initial domestic pretext for put-upon 35-year-old Sonia’s ensuing jaunts, complete with a man-hating best friend, feels a little dated (more Shirley Valentine’s Eighties Liverpool than modern loaded-but-lonely SW16), readers of Hislop’s previous novel, The Island, will by now be familiar with her characters’ tendency to flee present-day dissatisfactions into history.
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