Inheritance

A beautifully taut, uncommonly rich novel about the myths we inherit, set between London and Kenya

When Lara was a baby, her father had a life-altering accident. Her mother left England and began a new life in Kenya, where Lara grew up.

Thirty-five years later, Lara lives in London with her partner Max, a musician, and his young daughter Paloma, who stays with them every week. She is absorbed by her work as a historian on a project to find the lost burial grounds of Kenyans who died fighting for the British in the two world wars – absorbed too by the experience of stepmotherhood, the learning of Paloma and her ways.

Lara’s quiet contentment is punctured when their landlady asks them to move out. But a serendipitous encounter with her father’s cousin, Patrick, offers sanctuary in the form of an unoccupied stuccoed townhouse. Ensconced, with her fledgling family, in the space and solidity of this house, Lara can close her eyes and feel the outline of the life that might have been hers, and slip back into the past.

Patrick seems intrigued – perhaps too intrigued – by Lara’s connection to Kenya and her colleague Gideon, who is being pressured to sell a tract of land he owns. As moral unease does battle with her desire to remain in Patrick’s house, what bargains will Lara be willing to make, what negotiations of conscience, and at what cost?

Set between London and Kenya, Inheritance is a taut and uncommonly rich novel that asks us to examine the myths that we believe – about history, about our country’s past, about the people we think we know, and what we think we understand about ourselves.