Your Blue-Eyed Boy
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A heart-stopping novel from the WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017
'A brilliantly plotted thrilling fable unravelling dark, sad secrets' Mail on Sunday
'There are things you should know about blackmail . . . '
At thirty-eight Simone has responsibilities: she's a district judge with two small boys and a husband on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. When she receives a letter postmarked New York she has no idea that opening it will threaten all she has worked for and call into question her judgement. For the photographs contained in the letter remind her of things she regrets from twenty years ago, and a man she'd decided to forget.
But blackmail, like the heart, never forgets . . .
'A highly charged, haunting novel . . . beautifully wrought' The Times
'Excellently readable, genuinely disturbing' Anita Brookner, Spectator
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An intriguing situation, seamless pacing, a rising sense of menace and a surprise ending bring Dunmore's new novel (after the well-received Talking to the Dead) into the winner's circle. British district judge Simone struggles as the family breadwinner, while her unemployed husband faces bankruptcy and takes care of their two boys. Keeping the family together in their remote seaside village is hard enough, but Simone's fragile world--also undermined by a childhood trauma--is threatened by the intrusion of her long-buried past. Michael, an American Vietnam veteran whom she met during a summer in the States, sends her an intense letter and copies of several photographs of them nude together. Then he arrives in her village, having decided to reconnect with the one person whose image he has nurtured over two decades, some of which was spent in a mental hospital. Dunmore intricately weaves past and present, bringing the experimental atmosphere of the 1970s to life as Simone reads Michael's letters and views the incriminating photographs taken by his war buddy, Calvin, whom she remembers as a constant unsettling presence. The indelible impression of a first true love contrasts with Simone's fierce desire to protect her family from what seems to be a blackmail plot. The novel's marsh-country setting, where bogs can swallow people whole, is a fearsome metaphor for a life abundant with insecurity and tension. This is a provocative tale, candid about the way past deeds and encounters can endanger present lives, casting shadows that can't be erased.
