Two people, a world apart, separated by time and grief, their lives destined to converge… but what happens when finally they meet? Almost forty years ago, on an ashram in India, a devastating series of events led to Daniel’s complete psychotic breakdown. Since then he has worked hard to remake his identity, keeping his history under wraps. Now a successful psychotherapist, but with his once … happy marriage unexpectedly crumbling, Daniel wakes from an ominous dream, warning him that his past is coming back to haunt him.
Meanwhile, shocked by her mother’s deathbed revelations, Mira is hunting down her father. A lesbian artist, renowned for intimate, erotic photographs of women, she is determined to settle old scores. Love is not initially anywhere on Mira’s agenda, yet in meeting the enigmatic Luce she finds a startling twist in her search for truth.
Daniel’s tortured memories, recorded in his journal, connect the present with his mysterious past. What really did happen in India? Daniel’s wife Callie also has secrets, and her reasons for keeping them. Can their relationship survive? And what will happen when Mira confronts the realities of her own beginnings and the story that has sustained her whole identity?
This original and complexly layered novel reveals the shifting nature of truth, the indestructible depth of human connection, the power of negative enchantment, and ultimately the redemptive spirit of love.
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I’m not sure I have the language to do this book justice. I could say it’s about emotional and physical relationships between three women, or the mother/daughter and father/son relationships, or the anguish a parent feels on losing a child, or the gullibility of youth. I could say it’s an intricate, meticulous, and introspective dissection of the human psyche. It’s all these things and much more. It’s so beautifully written, the language and descriptions so fabulously evocative and so deeply moving that it touched me, resonated within me on many levels – guilt, regret, blame, despair, hope, the needing to love and be loved – forgiveness and the act of forgiving oneself. The story is deceptively simple – the feelings the language evoke are deep, sometimes dark, and always insightful and thought-provoking, while the prose is, in places, at once both achingly beautiful and exquisitely painful. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more of Lesley Hayes’s work.
A truly remarkable and fascinating story!
This is a book that is as much character driven as it is about plot and storyline, although in this case, the one skilfully reinforces the other. What follows is an enthralling story, spanning more than three decades across as many continents, from the outward respectability of suburban America and academic Oxford, to the drugs and cults of the hippie trail retreats of India.
It starts off with the death of the mother of one of the central characters, Mira, an American artist and photographer. Mira is coming to terms with her mother’s deathbed revelations, and the cold remoteness of their relationship whilst she was alive. The story then switches to Daniel, a psychotherapist living in Oxford in the UK, and his younger wife, Callie. Daniel is troubled by recurring nightmares that relate to his travels as a young man in India, as well as worrying about the growing stagnation of his marriage; Callie too worries about her marriage, her regrets, and about getting older among other things. Secrets abound on all sides, each only knowing their side and part of the wider story.
Initially it feels as though you’re reading two completely different stories in parallel, effortlessly switching between the two, but with little or no clue as to how these seemingly unconnected stories of Mira and the troubled English couple will tie in with one another, and it is quite some time before they suddenly do collide in dramatic and unforeseen circumstances. Throughout this book, the author leaves several hints and clues as to the truth of what’s going on, whilst leaving the characters totally at odds with one another: conflict, deceit, confusion, and misconceptions are in abundance for much of the time, so much so that even with the benefit of insight into all the character’s minds, the reader is still kept guessing almost to the end, just what the overall truth is.
Much of the story is told by way of memories and reflections of the past, but sufficiently grounded in the context of the story so as not to be a `stream of consciousness,’ as in say, Virginia Wolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway,’ though the structure of writing and literary style certainly echoes that of Virginia Wolf’s classic novel; there are several scenes of self-reflection and analysis that cleverly develop character, revealing links between the past and present, giving the reader a real sense of how the characters became the people they are rather than some two dimensional snapshot image taken at a single instant in time. Quite unusually, the author occasionally switches from third to first person narratives for some of the different chapters and characters, but still achieves good and clear transitions and story progression.
Although this is not the sort of book I would normally read, it is without doubt one of the best I’ve read this year; the quality of writing and depth of characterisation, aligned with intelligent and convincing dialogue, and above all, a truly fascinating and intriguing story, kept me interested and entertained throughout. It’s not a book that can easily be skimmed through, demanding instead the reader’s full and undivided attention, but that attention is well rewarded by a remarkable story, and characters that will stay in the reader’s mind long after they’ve finished reading. A literary gem!