The snake in paradise

The title is a slight puzzle, a tease. But quickly all becomes clear. Here is a book of painful but fictional recollections recounted by fictional novelist Imogen Bailey, which in turn become a real novel of both power and delicacy.

Imogen, a young woman of great sensibility, was traumatised by the loss of her beloved brother Johnny, who swam out to sea when Imogen was in her late teens, and never returned. Rendered speechless by this tragedy, Imogen was sent by her parents to a nursing home to recover from her breakdown. Thirty years after her brother’s death, looking back, remembering, she tries to sort out the truth from the imagined: the reality, then, from the reality as she now perceives it. A jumble of elements darken the story.

Imogen’s parents were both doctors. Her mother, Sylvia, was an unloving woman, her father kindly but distant. ‘Their indifference was so great I felt they were unaware of my presence as I stood or sat between them.’