The Quiet Woman

Emerging from Priest's mid-career, this one follows Alice Stockton, a writer who has recently moved to a quiet English village following a divorce. The inciting incident comes when her neighbour, an elderly woman called Eleanor, is found dead in what appears to be a murder. Meanwhile, Alice's proposed next book has been seized by the Home Office for apparently containing "subversive material".

Eleanor's son arrives in the area to oversee the formalities and paperwork resulting from his mother's death. But Eleanor (whom Alice had become very friendly with) had never mentioned a son. With Eleanor also having been a writer whilst alive, Alice takes it upon herself to start writing a literary biography of her deceased neighbour, but becomes increasingly caught up in Eleanor's enigmatic life. Was she really the woman she said she was, and had lived the life she said she did?

Priest demonstrates his mastery over cognitive estrangement in this novel; we get alternate tellings of the same events through two characters' eyes as the chapters alternate between Alice and the mysterious son of her deceased neighbour. All this against a background conceit of a radioactive incident affecting the south of England, which may or may not have had some connection to Eleanor's activities in life, and why she was murdered.

A strange novel that that fosters a sense of uncomfortableness in the reader, it was with this perhaps more minor work by Priest which really made me appreciate his craft, and why he's so often considered by those who know his work as the best at exploring themes of memory and perception.

This was a real page-turner for me; I devoured it in 2 days and there are so many other details embedded into the fabric of this narrative that I'm sure will compel me to re-read it in the future.