January has been a particularly excellent month for new releases.
Girl A by Abigail Dean
Girl A begins with Lex finding out her mother has died in prison. She has to go and collect her mother’s belongings and make the necessary arrangements. She seems calm and unmoved.
Lex Gracie is Girl A: the first girl to escape from the ‘House of Horrors’ – her family home. She was one of seven children brought up in abject cruelty. Tied to their beds, beaten and starved, the children endured years of physical and mental abuse from their father, and their weak mother.
Lex must make contact with her siblings and travel back to the place she’s tried to forget.
Rather than focusing solely on her grim past, we go back and forth in time, tracing what happened in the Gracie household, interspersed with passages of Lex’s life now. We are reassured early on that things have turned out quite well for her – she is a successful lawyer living in New York – but we soon find out the extent of the psychological damage understandably caused by her upbringing at home.
It’s a story of progression.
Lex and her siblings did go to school for a while, before their father decided to take their education into his own hands. His teaching was ‘heavy on biblical studies, with some questionable world history’ and the children were allowed out into the garden to run around, until things got inexplicably worse. Her father was delusional. He set up his own church in town (although its ‘congregation’ in the end was just his family), and he ensured his children soon had no contact with the outside world.
Each sibling has grown up with different views about their family. Lex’s older brother Ethan seems disturbingly like his father and her younger sister Delilah seems to be in denial, dismissive about how bad it was at home, etcetera.
It is a gripping read. The story could have been told in many different ways, but this is the best, most effective version, I think. We never find out the true extent of Lex’s terrible childhood (but we are told that the woman who found her on the road thought she was a ghost, and that she needed several operations in hospital immediately afterwards, and that she had to learn how to walk again) so the emphasis of the book is on her life post-home: her adoption, her university life and beyond.
If you enjoyed books like ‘Room’ and ‘The Girl on the Train’, and the twists of ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Eleanor Oliphant’, then you will definitely enjoy Girl A. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking.
‘Girl A’ by Abigail Dean was published on 21st January by Harper Collins.
Victoria Park by Gemma Reeves
Victoria Park feels like a film, the camera poised all over Victoria Park in London and documents the lives of those who frequent it. Wolfie used to own the nearby deli and his wife Mona sadly suffers from dementia. He tries to remain upbeat and positive for her sake and his friends and family try to support him as best they can. Luca has now taken over from Wolfie at the deli. He’s a family man, with a loving wife and children. So far, so straightforward. Until, that is, we read his wife’s version of their family.
‘Victoria Park’ is skilfully told from multiple perspectives over the course of a year, so we see the story from a full 360. A brilliant read, really engaging. Each story is sensitively and convincingly handled. I really enjoyed it and I know you will too.
