![]() ![]() ![]() Indifferent towards Michael’s physical charms, she reveals to him the waning of his sexual allure. She throws Astrid’s camera away and seduces Magnus. Amber is lovely, fierce and unpredictable. Each of these lives is thrown onto a different track by the arrival of mysterious, mercurial Amber, who is probably not telling the truth when she says she became a vagrant after killing a child in a car accident. Astrid, 12 and bored, sees life at one remove through the viewfinder of her camera her brother Magnus, implicated in a bullying that led to a school mate’s death, is borderline suicidal their mother, Eve, a writer, is blocked and their stepfather, Michael, an academic, is a compulsive philanderer. This third novel, her second to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, reveals its hand slowly as it switches among Alhambra, a recurrent character, and the separate trajectories of the Smart family, on holiday in Norfolk. Highly touted Brit Smith ( Hotel World, 2002, etc.) is an original whose choppy perspectives and internal riffs take some getting used to. Dazzling wordplay and abundant imagination invigorate a tale of lives interrupted. ![]()
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