A Serpentine Affair by Tina Seskis
My rating: 4/5 cats
this was an interesting and suspenseful story about a group of friends—seven british women—who palled up at university in their youth and still, once a year, meet up to gossip and eat and pick at old wounds. this year, they have gathered by the bank of the serpentine to have a picnic.
but this isn’t cozy chick lit.
because now that they are in their forties, many of them have husbands and children, and one is already widowed, and they know how much they have grown apart, and that their annual meeting has become more burden than celebration. this year’s picnic becomes increasingly volatile as the wine keeps flowing, and old grudges start to be aired, along with accusations and confessions of rape and murder and adultery.
and only six are going to leave this picnic alive.
the story cuts between the picnic, the past, and the aftermath of the death, following a number of characters and airing a lot of old stinky laundry. seskis is very good at drawing out the suspense—cutting each chapter at moments of about-to-be-revealed only to lead the reader into a scene that is just as compelling, with just as much intrigue and just as many landmines.
my only gripe is that it was a little unwieldy at times—seven characters is a bit too many for me, and then you add to that the additional perspectives of spouses and other secondary characters, and i got a little muddled trying to keep that many backstories and names straight, which i think is further complicated by the frequent perspective shifts, but which shifts i definitely enjoyed. i could have done with a compacted 5 characters, especially considering how little of camilla there was in the book, or kate. see? down to five already!
the pacing was very good—once i got everyone straight in my head, it was a long unspooling spell of various unaired grievances and lies, which is something i really appreciate in my novels. i love “family secrets” kind of books, and this one had so many characters with secrets, it really satisfied that need for me.
the only other quibble i have is that i find it hard to believe that siobhan was as different in one part of her life as she was when she was with these women. it’s not a personality change—those kinds of things i can believe, that people can behave differently when they are with different groups of people, but having a character’s life go from composed and capable to slapstick pratfalls just because she is surrounded by different people seems a little unbelievable.
but it’s such a minor complaint. i really enjoyed getting to the bottom of all the various mysteries, with all the red herrings planted along the way, and i found the conclusion perfectly satisfying.
if you’re into ladies getting snipey and finally spilling long-nursed resentments with shifting timescapes and many many secrets, you should check this out.
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