Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins - #BookReview #Re-post

This is a re-post of the review which I wrote for this book during April 2020. I enjoyed it very much and it is being published in paperback today.  It is available from all good booksellers.

"They are waiting for an answer. What do they want me to say? Perhaps they think I am a stalker, targeting the president of an Oxford College on his early morning jog. I have an urge to laugh which is inappropriate. There is nothing funny about this, nothing whatsoever. Felicity is missing. The whole country is looking for her."

When the eight year old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers.

As Dee looks back over her time in the Master's Lodging - an eerie and ancient house - a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.

But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for concern? And most of all, why was Felicity silent?

Roaming through Oxford's secret passages and hidden graveyards, Magpie Lane, explores the true meaning of family - and what it is to be denied one.

***

This fabulous book ended up being a quick read for me as I could not put it down and sprinted through it to get to the books conclusion. Mostly told retrospectively during a police interview, the narrative goes back and forth with the recollections of the main character, Dee, coupled with the immediacy of the interview.

The characters were excellently portrayed.  Nick and Mariah were difficult to like and this opinion did not change throughout the book. Equally, both Felicity and Dee were engaging characters and I suspect most readers will love Felicity for her innocence and vulnerability. The main character, Dee, had a combination of strength and weakness and as the book progressed I did come to wonder how reliable she was as a narrator.

The house itself felt as though it was a character as the Masters Lodging is a focal point of the novel and much of the story is linked to the house. The author did a brilliant job of making the house come alive as she did with Oxford itself. Highly atmospheric I felt completely immersed in the setting of this novel.

It is a sensitive, eerie and excellently written novel and I can hardly wait to read another book by Ms. Atkins. Have you read any of her other books? I would love to hear about them.

ISBN: 978 1786485571

Publisher: Quercus

About the Author:

Lucy Atkins is an award winning author, feature journalist and Sunday Times book critic. She has written for newspapers including The #Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times and The Telegraph as well as many UK magazines. She teaches on the Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford University and lives in Oxford.