A wonderfully circular novel about events that are out of our control, and how we can possibly take our lives back afterward, or if we can, or should we.
Yes, it's a British sort-of whodunnit told from 20 years after the Big Event, which is the abduction of a toddler, and the death of her sister when she is hit by the getaway car. There were only a few witnesses, one of whom is the main character in this book: David Umber. Take note of the name; it's carefully chosen. He later married the nanny from whom the children were abducted, and they battled their individual demons and memories of the event until her death a few years before the book begins.
We catch up with David 20 years later, living (sort of) in Prague doing canned tours of the city for foreign sight-seers. One of the tourists turns out to be the police officer who was assigned to the case originally. CI Sharp (again with the name) has recently retired and has been stung by an anonymous letter that accuses him of not doing his best work on this case.
The two of them go back to England to see what Sharp could have missed. And from there all sorts of weirdness ensues.
Wonderful story that's really not that much about the criminal case, but about how we react to events and how the oddest things end up sticking in our heads (and our hearts). At the end, the reader is left wondering what these people all would have become had this tragedy never happened. And how much of history is memory and unprovable premise.
Yes, it's a British sort-of whodunnit told from 20 years after the Big Event, which is the abduction of a toddler, and the death of her sister when she is hit by the getaway car. There were only a few witnesses, one of whom is the main character in this book: David Umber. Take note of the name; it's carefully chosen. He later married the nanny from whom the children were abducted, and they battled their individual demons and memories of the event until her death a few years before the book begins.
We catch up with David 20 years later, living (sort of) in Prague doing canned tours of the city for foreign sight-seers. One of the tourists turns out to be the police officer who was assigned to the case originally. CI Sharp (again with the name) has recently retired and has been stung by an anonymous letter that accuses him of not doing his best work on this case.
The two of them go back to England to see what Sharp could have missed. And from there all sorts of weirdness ensues.
Wonderful story that's really not that much about the criminal case, but about how we react to events and how the oddest things end up sticking in our heads (and our hearts). At the end, the reader is left wondering what these people all would have become had this tragedy never happened. And how much of history is memory and unprovable premise.
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