Tangled Web UK Review March 2003
Remember Me by
Sarah Diamond
pbk out January 03
(Orion)
at £9.99
For Rachel (flat in Camden Town, boyfriend, good job with prospects)
everything is mellow. For Sophie, newly arrived in the big city, there
is everything to play for. Both women, we discover, originate from the
same seaside town in Dorset. But these two share something more, an
event 14 years before, that marked both of them for life – an event that
both have put behind them. Or have they? A chance meeting sets in motion
a sea-change in both lives that will have disastrous consequences.
Nothing new there then. But don’t pass this one by. Diamond reworks
these well-worn ingredients with tremendous confidence and style. Her
prose is lively, observant and perceptive, always alert to the defining
nuances of behaviour, whether casual or intimate. The two women are
particularly well-drawn, their lives, attitudes and relationships
skilfully contrasted, the unstoppable logic of the events now overtaking
Rachel well conveyed. Diamond is less convincing in her depiction of the
loner Peter with whom Rachel inevitably becomes involved. But Diamond
hits home with the brittle Diane, Rachel’s boss at the advertising
agency where she works, whose ingratiating “Rach” turns to “Rachel” as
the ad pitch, itself an integral part of the plot, goes wrong.
A credible backdrop too. As might be expected from a writer herself
with a background in advertising, Diamond understands the politics of a
high-pressure environment, the dynamics of the deadline. It is something
that assists the already high suspense factor.
Structure too is well thought out: a diary that gradually
contextualises the fateful event and teases us as to its nature
intertwining with the two women’s headlong progress towards the tragic
events that climax the tale, dreams, unwelcome recollections occurring
at strategic points in the text.
There’s a clear sense of inexorable fate at work, reminiscent of
classic American ‘noir’. You won’t put this one down. A little gem (pun,
unfortunately, intended). Don’t miss.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
New Books by Sarah Diamond at Amazon.co.uk
Secondhand and Out of Print Books by Sarah Diamond at Alibris.com
