What a strange story this is: British ex-pat Lucy Fly has lived in Tokyo for ten years and works as a translator; she befriends Lily, another Brit newly arrived in Tokyo. Her lover – she hesitates to use the word “boyfriend” is Teiji, an amateur photographer, about whom Lucy is quite possessive....
I have now read all of Susanna Jones's novels, and this - her second - was typically compelling, readable and haunting. Water Lily is subtitled 'a novel of mystery', which I don't think is quite accurate. A novel of obsession, maybe: a novel of delusion, certainly. There are two main characters -...
It was the end of the summer vacation. I sat beside him in the drawing room. King Edward had passed away in May and Father decided that he must follow shortly. My life is nicely finished off now, he would say. I don’t want to straggle on into somebody else’s era. I’d be the unwelcome guest at the...
She took a chomp and began to chew as she followed the bookshelf along the wall to the window. She liked to crunch a russet or two on a slow day. The girl called Leila had started it, and she’d got it from Jo March, who liked to steal away with half a dozen russets when she read a good book. Leil...