English Correspondence - Rilegato

Sylvie is half French and half English. Since the death of her mother, she has written weekly letters to her father in London. When he too dies unexpectedly, she waits for the letter she knows he must have posted before his death. And as she waits, her carefully ordered life finally begins to unravel. Janet Davey's mesmerising first novel has the deceptive simplicity of a perfect piece of chamber music, or a Vermeer interior. Set in the Meuse - an area of France that is on the way to everywhere but nowhere in itself - it involves a small cast of characters who move around each other in a complex game of emotional chess. Sylvie and her husband own a small hotel. He cooks; she runs it. Their lives are lived in public, as if they are permanently on stage - not ideal if your marriage is crumbling. The death of both her parents crystallises Sylvie's sense that she has made all the wrong choices. But to change anything would bring the whole fragile card tower tumbling down. Brilliantly observed, delightfully witty and beautifully written, English Correspondence condenses all the major questions of adult life - love, marriage, children, grief - into the time it takes to arrange a funeral and discover what happened to a missing letter. It marks the debut of a writer to rank alongside Jean Rhys in the incisive exploration of human desire and weakness.