Staring at the Light by
Frances Fyfield
hbk out March 99
Published by Bantam
Many people write crime novels. Rather fewer write novels with crimes in them. Frances Fyfield belongs in the second category. Her novels are twentieth-century fairy stories, fables for our time.
Her latest novel has at least one princess and a particularly loathsome dragon. It continues the story of Sarah Fortune, "a tart with heart and morals", a London solicitor with no illusions about the profession she adorns. On one level, the book is about a Belfast criminal who is trying desperately to go straight and to make a living as an artist. Encouraging him are his wife, his dentist, Sarah and Sarah's aunt, who happens to be a nun. Unfortunately his sad and soulless twin brother has other ideas, most of them to do with a desire for revenge springing from a twisted love. In a sense, love is what the novel is really about -- human love, imperfect, sometimes terrifying yet still breathtaking.
Fyfield writes beautifully. Her narrative lays ambushes for the reader and leaps out at unexpected moments. Best of all, she looks long and deep into the human heart and shows us what she finds there. You learn an awful lot about dentists and dentistry, too.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Staring at the Light by
Frances Fyfield