In The Past (set chiefly in the present) four middle-aged siblings spend an eventful summer holiday in the Devon country house vacated by their dead grandparents. When Alice, a failed actress, turns up with an unannounced male guest who’s still at university, her footloose ways vex the others — particularly the youngest, Fran, a harassed teacher with two small children, Ivy and Arthur. Then there’s demure Harriet, the eldest sibling, who needed to grow up fast when their mother Jill died young. Her secret diary shows how far her selflessness edges into repression, not least after she accidentally spies on her brother Roland in bed with his latest wife, a taut Argentinian named Pilar.
An omniscient narrator generates a steady hum of dramatic irony by revealing what each character thinks but can’t or won’t say. The different perspectives are convincing and— no mean feat — the passages from the point of view of small children especially so.
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