What a wonderful start to a new year of reading. The first chapter of Livesey’s novel is just about perfect. In a few deft strokes, she delineates the character of each of the three young people at the center of the book. Walking home from school are Matthew, soon to enter university, his younger sister Zoe, the middle child, and thirteen-year-old Duncan, who we learn is adopted. Zoe, who notices things, spots a flash of red in the field behind the hedgerow. On further investigation, they discover that the red which looks like stockings is actually blood from the wounds suffered by the still, supine boy, about Zoe’s age, lying among the haybales. Help is summoned. Although this opening suggests that this will be a detective story set in a bucolic village outside Oxford, England, it is a psychological study of the three siblings as they grow into maturity, of their seemingly ideal but actually quite complicated family, and of good, evil, and the random consequences that make up life. Exquisitely written without a wasted word, and highly recommended. 245 pp.
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