Shady people in the sun

The characters in Rose Tremain’s deft new novel are almost all remarkably unpleasant.

The characters in Rose Tremain’s deft new novel are almost all remarkably unpleasant. Not just wicked or selfish, but strangely pathetic, too. In fact, their nastiness is so ingrained and so unignorable that one begins to suspect a degree of authorial malice.

Of course, Tremain is too good to present caricatures: her characters are all amply supplied with motives, credible back stories and the appropriate quotient of human quiddity. But from start to finish, an acrid atmosphere hovers over her every description, and it permeates not just the characters but the main actions of the plot.

Let’s just say it’s not quite what you’d expect from a novel set in the south of France.

Most popular

Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

One of the characters, Anthony, is an aging antiques dealer.