The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah
Ms. Hannah is the queen of the first person dialogue. Her characters speak directly to you with passion and wit, and they draw you in to their worlds with the momentum of a runaway train. You are going so fast that you pick and choose characteristics, tics, moods and motives which at first seem straightforward and unequivocal. Only there is a clever catch. Maybe you’ve presumed wrongly; maybe you have assigned more weight to a verbal “turn of phrase” than you should have; maybe you should reassess what you have assumed and take a somewhat more relaxed look at the big picture? At some points the central characters appear almost like clones of each other, but are they? Ms. Hannah’s skill is in her nuanced portrayal of reaction and emotion. You know there is something going on in the text that you cannot quite grasp, just like an itch you can’t scratch. Mercifully she does turn up the lights at the conclusion and lets you see the cast sans makeup! A superb read.
