There are some beautiful passages in this book, because Helen Dunmore is a brilliant writer. I liked the way she got me to understand Simone's younger self while still showing me that the choices Simone made were not very good. I wanted Simone to grow up more and make better choices later in life. This is evocative, a little depressing, but very rich in emotion. ( )

When your past catches up with you......

I'm not normally a fan of thrillers, and blackmail would definitely not attract me, but this book was chosen by my book group and so I agreed to read it.
I had particularly enjoyed The Siege by Helen Dunmore and more recently, Exposure. In addition, she was scheduled to attend our up-coming Lit Fest (although in the end, she didn't make it).

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. It was not so much a book about blackmail, as about the relationships that we make during our lives, how they affect us and how we respond to them.

I felt for the lead character, who was working as a district judge - a job she probably would not have pushed for, had her husband not lost his job and debts begun piling up.
She had to drag herself to work every day, where she would pass sentence on various cases, but notably, declaring people bankrupt, when all the time, her husband got closer to being in the same position. The irony of this appealed to me.

Then a past boyfriend erupted onto the scene, complicating an already difficult situation.
It was interesting how she responded to this, especially as he was no longer the sexy young man she'd known before. He also had some mental issues, which made him a bit of a 'loose cannon'.

For me, the resolution let the book down, but as a study of characters and interactions I enjoyed it.

Other books I've read by this author:
Burning Bright (4 stars)
Ice Cream - short stories (5 stars)
House of Orphans (3 stars)
The Siege (4 stars)
Exposure (4.5 stars) ( )

This book is on my "controversial books" list, ie books which have a big divergence of opinion in the ratings they have been given. I can see why - it's very well-written and well-crafted, but the subject matter is discomforting and a key event strains credulity, or at least it does if you ignore the hints scattered through the book that there are times when some people, subconsciously or not, deliberately seek out failure.

Simone is a district judge, married to an architect. To the world outside they are to be envied, with their well-paying professional jobs. But Donald's practice failed and all Simone's salary is going to service his debt. The new dynamics of the relationship are jarring, especially as they had to move to a new home far from London, and Simone works harder and sees the family less. Donald is alternately despondent and clutching at crazy ideas to set them back on their feet. Every day at work, Simone sees people whose nice, ordinary, safe lives have fallen apart - because of one slip, one bad decision, the dice falling the wrong way. Then one day, she starts to receive odd and potentially menacing letters and phone calls from a man she knew twenty years before.

The book seems to be about the impermanence of well-being, the thin veneer of normal life. It goes back further than the Vikings who used to haunt Simone's stretch of coast: "These men coming inland, across the cleared ground, moving quickly in spite of their weight. Such things have always been happening. Sometimes they stop for a while, but they start up again before long. If you happen to be born in one of those happy times when nothing's happening, then the change can be a real shock". ( )

This story of a woman surrounded by men in varying stages of mental disintegration felt like two separate novels. One very straightforward with its feet on the ground, dealing with domestic stuff and an interesting job in the legal profession. The other rather more nebulous, poetically written but sometimes hard to grasp.

I can only admire the way Helen Dunmore writes, the poetic nature of her prose, her ability to make you see the world in a different light with her subtle use of language, particularly when describing the marshy coastline around where this story is set. My only problem - and it's almost certainly a problem with me rather than the book - is that I struggled to grasp exactly what was going on with the 'blackmail' plot, why the characters acted as they did, and why anyone would find the character Michael endearing. That said, it's got to be a four star for me, an intelligently and thoughtfully written book. ( )

There's quite a bit of suspense and tension in this story, and that kept this reader interested, but more than that, Dunmore is such a good writer that her work is a great read even if the plot isn't going anywhere. She has a wonderful ability to capture and describe the essence of subtle human interactions. A major overall theme of this book seems to be the issue of how a person can make judgments about other people when that person is flawed ... as we all are. The "there but for the grace of god go I" sort of feeling that we have. Only an instant in time and a trivial event can tip us from being upholder of the law to criminal, from being married to estranged, etc. ( )