A Double Life

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A Double Life is a dull tale about Claire, a doctor and traumatized woman still struggling with the violence her father inflicted on her family over two decades ago. Whenever Dylan is down the critical dumper, Heylin is his defender, and the reverse is true: this can skew the reading experience, minimising the important moments in Dylan’s career and interfering with the storytelling. The father may have murdered the nanny and tried to murder the ex wife, he had possibly been spotted several times over the years after he disappeared, the daughter befriends someone who may have info and tries to find him and then there is a little bit left to the story after that.

She doesn't know if she's the daughter of a murderer or a wronged man, but Claire will soon learn how far she'll go to finally find the truth. Today his voice is almost unrecognisable from his 1960s peak, and the man whose songs had been devoted to dissecting his romantic relationships has become focused on mortality, solitude and getting old. Claire has no boundaries and no conscience about how she will learn the truth about her father, and even inserts herself into his former circle of friends by lying about her identity. Loosely inspired by one of the most notorious unsolved crimes of the 20th century – the Lord Lucan case – A Double Life is at once a riveting page-turner and a moving reflection on women and violence, trauma and memory, and class and privilege.

My favourite books include Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty, Restless by William Boyd, Alys, Always by Harriet Lane, The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre, but I'm also inspired by (and unashamedly addicted to) compelling TV drama, with favourite series including The Night Manager, True Detective, and The Honourable Woman.

The book cuts between the third person narrative of Gabriela and the first person narrative of Isobel with both women doggedly pursuing their own investigations, increasingly fearful of exposure and justifiably paranoid. In a mysterious dedication he pays tribute to a Peter Heylyn, born in 1599: a church historian “who was unfriended” by his contemporary Thomas Fuller “for Telling It Right Like It Is”. The spy element ( more trafficking) is rather peripheral to the story despite the publicity surrounding the book suggesting otherwise .Heylin remains minimalist on the merits of the comeback records (why accept that a comeback was necessary for someone he loved all along? It follows Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night. Before the timelines converge, Gabriela has somehow managed to start a second family without her husband and children knowing. An unsung classic of nineteenth-century Russian literature, Karolina Pavlova’s A Double Life alternates prose and poetry to offer a wry picture of Russian aristocratic society and vivid dreams of escaping its strictures. Confirms the promise of Berry’s debut, Under the Harrow… Mesmerisingly effective’ The Sunday Times | ‘Shocking’ Guardian | ‘Berry gives the well-worn story of Lord Lucan a fresh twist with this clever tale’ i (Best Beach Reads for Summer) | ‘A compulsive page-turner’ Daily Mail | ‘ A damning dissection on class and privilege.