![]() ![]() ![]() Why is Kate so intimate with Jake, and why so familiar with the house? Until Kate arrives as a lodger, and Marisa’s sense of self begins to erode. Apart from Jake’s frosty and controlling mother, Annabelle, who calls unexpectedly one day when Jake is out, all seems ideal. Jake wants a family, and so does Marisa – acutely so, as her own mother left with Marisa’s baby sister when she was seven. A children’s illustrator, she even has room there to have her own studio. ![]() Within three months, Marisa has left her small rented north London flat and moved into Jake’s spacious place in Battersea. This romantic cliche has a double-edged meaning, and warning signs flash as the twists and turns of Day’s plot unfold. At their first physical meeting, “she felt a crackle of energy, a fusion of some sort, as if two molecules had collided and meshed and sparked a new thing”. Marisa has found the man of her dreams online: Jake. I nfertility, surrogacy, sexual assault, mental illness and a lot of desirable housing stock might seem too much for one book, but with her new novel, Magpie, Elizabeth Day pulls off a polished and creepy thriller which probes at the heart of what it means to be able to conceive a child – or not. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |