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WINNER OF THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020 `A superb piece of writing about London life. Past Wingate winners include Zadie Smith, Amos Oz and David Grossman' '[A] shimmering new novel . . . Grant's book is as much a love letter to London as a lament, an ode to pink skin after sunny days and lost gloves waving from railings' The Economist 'A compelling portrait of contemporary London, it's a novel fit for shifting, uncertain times' Suzi Feay, Financial Times 'A Stranger City feels like a very important novel for right now: no politically ponderous diatribe but a witty, sunlounger-accessible and deeply humanising story about people - about us - and the societal shipwreck we're stuck in' Evening Standard When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman and confirms a sense that in London a person can become invisible once outside their community - and that assumes they even have a community. A policeman, a documentary film-maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. The film-maker and the policeman meanwhile have safe homes with wives - or do they? An immigrant family speaks their own language only privately; they have managed to integrate - or have they? The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea. How all our lives intersect and how coincidence or the randomness of birth place can decide how we live and with whom.
Reviews with the most likes.
I really enjoyed this book - I thought it was a murder mystery at the start but it soon wanders off in different directions with a cast of characters, who all have the kind of connections you can get in cities. An overheard conversation on a train sees us leaving the character we thought we were following as if we decided to leave them and wander after the stranger we just saw...
It's not a fun book - there's little humour here and the bleakness sets in. On occasion it wanders into fantasy (or does it? That's the question) and the conclusion of one character's story is disatisfyingly unreal.
The book ends where it started and I think I'd have preferred the central mystery unsolved, it risks becoming an info dump that doesn't add anything. There are times too when the dialogue is clunky (the opening chapter, for example) and I wonder (as I often do nowadays) where the editor was on this.
But despite the niggles, it was a book that kept me engaged and an introduction to an author I don't know.