Daily Mail, Friday, August 16, 2019 Page 55FOLLOW ME
TO GROUND
by Sue Rainsford
(Penguin
£12.99, 208 pp)
It’s hard to convey
the enthralling,
queasy weirdness of this tale.
Part fable, part novella, it’s both
rooted in acute observation and
crazily untethered.
Ada and her father live on the
edge of a village and make
people better. they hypnotise
them, plunge their hands into
their innards and, when they’re
really ill, bury them and let the
earth work its magic.
Ada herself is born of this soil,
but her emotions are slowlyAn adaptation of her novel Deep Water
started this week on ItV.THE ESCAPE ROOM
by Megan Goldin
(Trapeze £7.99, 368 pp)
Former foreign correspond-
ent Goldin has turned to writing
novels, and an exceptionally fine
job she is making of it, too.
this, her second, is a rivetingly
high-concept tale. Four Wall street high-
flyers find themselves trapped in a lift in a
not-yet-occupied office building in the south
Bronx, New York. they are all ridiculously
over-paid and ruthlessly ambitious and all
have been directed there by an office exercise
called ‘escape room’, in which they are
trapped in a lift for an hour.
their only objective is to get out — but
how? Like rats in a trap, they reveal their true
characters and descend into bitter conflict,
especially after one of them produces a gun.
It emerges that the exercise has not been
organised by their employer, but by someone
else. the question is, who? And will they
emerge alive? spine-chilling stuff.echoes of Jeffery Deaver’s famous
quadriplegic Lincoln rhyme. told at a
ferocious pace in staccato prose, this
thriller truly gets the blood racing.CLEAR MY NAME
by Paula Daly
(Bantam Press £12.99, 304 pp)
DALY turns to a miscarriage of
justice for her latest inspiration.
Carrie Kamara has been
imprisoned for 15 years for the
murder of her husband’s
mistress, and thereby separated
from mia, the daughter she adores.
three years into her sentence, her case is
taken up by Innocence UK, a group that
examines miscarriages of justice. Its leader,
tess Gilroy — although initially sceptical —
suspects that Carrie may have been wrongly
convicted, even though it looks like an open-
and-shut case as Carrie’s DNA was found on
a door handle at the crime scene.
Gilroy investigates the serpentine twists
and turns of the evidence, proving how
spectacularly talented Daly is as a weaver of
intensely compelling contemporary tales.BOOKSFICTION
PLATFORM SEVEN
by Louise Doughty
(Faber £14.99, 448 pp)
IT’S 4am on a winter’s
morning at Peterborough
station, and a man is
preparing to end his life.
The opening of Louise Doughty’s
substantial ninth novel is as horribly
gripping as it is bleak, with the added
twist that its narrator, thirtysomething
teacher Lisa, is also dead, having fallen
on to the tracks some months before.
Could the two deaths be connected?
Doughty takes her time revealing the
answer, mining both pathos and sardonic
comedy from Lisa’s purgatory on
platform seven, before rewinding to the
time leading up to her death. And it’s at
this point that we learn about her
relationship with her ostensibly charming
doctor boyfriend, Matty, whose toxic
possessiveness is chillingly portrayed.
Doughty excels at naturalistic, bantering
dialogue, and Matty’s terrifying split-
second transformations and descents
into violent rage ring horribly true.
Yet the grimness is skilfully leavened,
with the various plot strands ultimately
resolving into a powerfully moving
mediation on the nature of love.
THE OFFING
by Benjamin Myers
(Bloomsbury £16.99, 272 pp)
DURHAM-BORN Ben Myers
may not be a household
name, but he’s one of the
most interesting, restless
writers of his generation.
His first novel reimagined the final days
of missing Manic Street Preacher Richey
Edwards, his most recent won the Walter
Scott Prize for historical fiction. And in
between he’s penned beyond-black ‘folk
crime’ novels set in the Yorkshire Dales.
Robert Macfarlane is a fan, too.
The Offing is a straightforward,
uncharacteristically gentle but beguiling
coming-of-age tale that begins when shy
16-year-old miner’s son Robert leaves
home, Laurie Lee-style, at the end of
World War II.
After some weeks tramping, he meets
the eccentric, entertainingly verbose
Dulcie, who detains him with river-in-
spate monologues and ration book-
defying feasts.
It is Dulcie who opens Robert’s eyes to
the wonders of poetry and, indeed, The
Offing is dedicated to the efforts of
inspirational librarians and teachers.
Unfurling at the unhurried pace of a
fern, it’s also an evocatively lyrical paean
to the countryside — deeply felt and
closely observed.
NIGHT FOR DAY
by Patrick Flanery
(Atlantic £16.99, 672 pp)
HOLLYWOOD’S Fifties
Communist witch-hunt is the
backdrop for this extensively
researched doorstopper, the
themes of which — freedom of expression
versus fear and persecution — have
undisguised contemporary relevance.
It takes the form of a confessional letter
written by ageing screenwriter Desmond
Frank to his lilac-eyed former lover,
movie star Myles Haywood.
More than 60 years since being driven
into exile by both his sexuality and his
politics, Desmond is ready to explain his
actions on his final fateful day in America
— and his decision to abandon Myles
without a word.
That single point of focus, in a novel this
length, makes for a considerable amount
of portentousness, and things at times
feel a little laboured.
But parallel narratives inject brio, and
Flanery has clearly had enormous fun
imagining the script of one of Desmond’s
slangy noirs (not to mention the censor’s
increasingly ludicrous objections).
LITERARY FICTION
by STEPHANIE CROSS
Does wealth trump happiness?Illustration: CHRIS COADYPOPULAR
WENDY HOLDEN
THRILLERS
GEOFFREY WANSELL
GOTHIC
JAMIE BUXTON
FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE
By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
(Wildfire £18.99, 384 pp)
THIS novel has caused much
excitement this summer, but
does it live up to the hype?
Toby, a doctor, is married
to hotshot uber-agent
Rachel, whose earnings are in
the millions. But she’s work-
obsessed and a terrible
mother, so they split, and Toby
begins a life of sex with random
women he’s met online.
The positives in his life are his
children, Solly and Hannah,
and old friends Libby and Seth.
Libby, now a malcontent
mother and frustrated hack,
part-narrates.
While it’s wonderfully,
perceptively written, most of
the characters are pretty
unappealing. The men are
sexist, the women suffer.
What I really loved was the
savage social satire.
Class division and wealthy
one-upmanship, holiday
homes, spin classes, mega-
apartments, posh schools; it’s
all here. Is Toby a metaphor
for Donald Trump’s America?GRACE’S TABLE
by Sally Piper
(Legend Press £8.99, 288 pp)
IN THE course (as it were!)
of this Australian-set book,Grace cooks and eats her 70th
birthday dinner.
The dishes she prepares and
the guests she invites prompt
memories; a biography in a
meal, in other words.
It’s a great idea and quite
beautifully written — especially
the mouthwatering culinary
descriptions. But the people
aren’t as nice as the food —
her ghastly husband in
particular — and there’s a
tragic reveal at the end.
On the plus side, there’s
cause for hope with the
younger generation —and a great recipe for
chocolate brownies.DO NOT FEED
THE BEAR
By Rachel Elliott
(Tinder Press
£18.99, 352 pp)
A TRAGIC mystery
hides in this
ingenious, funny novel, where
time slips in every direction
and narrators can be alive or
dead. Or dogs.
Sydney Smith is ten years old
when her mother dies, but we
don’t find out what happened
until right at the end ofthe book. To ease the trauma,
the grown-up Sydney goes
free-running over rooftops
and eventually falls off one in
St Ives.
Hurrying to the scene come
Sydney’s father, Howard, and
his partner, Ruth.
As Sydney recovers, they
move in with a woman named
Maria and her daughter,
Belle, who have their own
problems. Then things start
to improve for everyone in
totally unexpected ways.
Sad, wise and upbeat by
turns, this is a seaside summer
romance with a difference.CITY OF WINDOWS
by Robert Pobi
(Mulholland £16.99, 400 pp)
the internationally bestselling
Pobi has created a memorable
new character in one-time child
maths prodigy Dr Lucas Page, a
retired FBI man who is now a
physics professor.
he lost a leg, an arm and an eye while
working for the Bureau and had to leave.
Now, ten years on, his former agency
partner has been killed by a sniper in New
York and Page’s colleagues want him to
come back to help them catch him.
Page’s formidable mathematical skills
work out the geometry of where the shooter
may have positioned himself, at a speed the
FBI could never match.
It is the first of a series of shootings by
the sniper, and Page, assisted by a female
FBI agent, sets out to catch the killer, withbecoming all too human: feelings
emerge about her father and a
handsome young villager called
samson, one of her Cures.
Lyrical, dark and detailed,
the story twists like a root, bent
in one way by desire, in another
by fate — but never, ever relaxing
its grip.A SUPERIOR
SPECTRE
by Angela Meyer
(Contraband
£8.99, 288 pp)
From Australia to
scotland, and from
the near future to Victorian
edinburgh, this is a story about
haunting — past into present
and present into past.
riven by guilt and raddled by
disease, Jeff has chosen to die in
scotland, where he finds relief
by entering the mind of Leonora,an intrepid country girl sent
from her highland home to
stuffy old edinburgh to find a
husband. horribly constrained
by expectations, her spirit risks
being crushed entirely when she
starts seeing through Jeff ’s eyes
— and makes the mistake of
telling people.
Weighty themes of lust, shame
and the power of the male gaze
are beautifully balanced by a
moving narrative, then wrapped
up by the neatest of twists.TROLLS
by Stefan Spjut
(Faber £14.99,
464 pp)
As sLICK as wet
gristle, as chilly as
a frozen carcass,
brace yourself for a delectably
disconcerting read.
trolls exist, you see, on theborder between animal and
human. stealthy apex predators
that live in a brutal hierarchy of
squalid cruelty, it’s what they do
to our minds that really hurts.
the action takes places in a
cold swedish town.
susso, a doctor, has a mysterious
photo of something not quite
human tracking across the
snowy wastes, but is unwilling to
accept it.
It’s connected to the disappear-
ance of her oldest friend, and
soon we’re chasing mysteries in
a dank, twilight world of death
cults, shape-shifters, depravity
and — a first in fiction? — really
scary squirrels.