Apple Tree Yard – Louise Doughty

Women’s Fiction
5*’s

This has to be one of the best books I have read this year, I have been recommending it to all my friends who have all appreciated the tip!

What a fantastic story, the prose grabs you as soon as the first page is turned with the description of Yvonne Carmichael writing a letter to her lover. Yvonne is a respected scientist, a geneticist, married to Guy a fellow scientist and has two grown up children. The model woman so why, a few pages in, is she on trial?

The story is told with the events slowly teased out, but not so slowly that it is frustrating, the characters so alive that I could believe that I had met them and walked the very streets of London to Apple Tree Yard. The court room scenes were clearly well researched, I have since found out that Louise Doughty spent some time at the Old Bailey with the prosecution at a murder trial, this layer of authenticity only adds to the story being told. The story involves Mr X, Guy and a cast of others whose lives change because of Yvonne actions. Even better, just as you think you know everything and all that remains is the tying up of loose ends, there is a clever sting in the tale.

The story isn’t just about adultery and lust, it is as much about the way women perceive themselves and how they are judged by others. It is about the stories we tell ourselves, our own narrative, and the way this changes when someone else is let into these stories. I can’t recommend this book highly enough,it is really the best book I have read this year.

If ever there is a book to make someone stop on the brink of having an affair this book is it!

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