When I began Mrs Trefusis, eleventy three trillion years ago, I fell across some wonderful women bloggers, and their posts about the quotidien stuff entertained and inspired me, and made me want to keep on writing, to be amongst their number. We ended up in lists like the Tots 100, and became known as 'mummy bloggers' because occasionally the children were hauled into service when otherwise short of material, but I'm not sure I particularly loved the moniker, and I wasn't absolutely mad about the consequences, the barrowfuls of emails from PR's inviting one to try a new range of fishfingers or road test a new potty or review a special yoghurt with hidden vegetables or something.
Anyway, one of the bloggers I liked enormously was Clare Mackintosh - she was funny and wry, but also capable of breaking your heart when she wrote incredibly movingly of the death from meningitis of her tiny son. Fast forward six years, and whilst I've been fiddling about with the internets, she's given up the day job (she spent twelve years with the police force), made a living from writing, founded Chipping Norton Literary Festival, and landed a two book deal with Little, Brown. Chapeau! as Trefusis Minor likes to say.
(I like to say, Mrs Trefusis, you're a mega slouch and should delete twitter and all its satanic works and finish writing The Great Unfinished Novel - although, imagine if I do finish it, and discover it's abysmal, and I've wasted six years on it... )
I Let You Go is a psychological thriller - a woman's five year old son is killed in a hit and run, and she retreats to an isolated cottage to try to deal with her grief, but of course, the past, as it's wont to do, catches up with her.
I'm twenty pages in and it's already enormously gripping stuff, and what's really quite wonderful is that the 'voice' I liked so much when Clare was blogging is very much in evidence - it's truthful and hugely engaging, with a deft, polished, pacy style.
I can't quite bear to put it down, and I rather suspect it's one of those books that has you reading until the wee smalls, but I must save it until I've finished cramming for SJ Watson's Books That Built Me next week.
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