Jonathan Buckley, recent winner of the BBC national short story award, has written a marvellously absorbing novel that is both an account of the relationship between sisters Kate and Naomi and, with the lightest of touches, a disquisition on the nature of storytelling itself. Kate’s tentative work on a novel (which the reader is gently invited to judge in terms of its likely success or failure) is interrupted by a visit from Naomi, with whom she has a tense relationship, coloured by past awkwardness. Naomi is driven to recount other people’s stories in order to reassure Kate that the abrupt swerve her life is taking is going to be good for her. In particular, Naomi tells her about Bernát, a Hungarian man with whom she has formed a strong and unusual friendship. In conjuring Bernát through retelling his stories at one remove, the scaffolding that supports the novelist’s work is laid bare. We are pulled back from a very rich, enfolding narrative and forced to think about all the work of memory and language that goes to create the illusion of “real lives”. Engrossing at every level.
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