Novel of the week Francesca Carington

C304PP, CHATTO AND WINDUS, £14.99, EBOOK £9.99 anadian author Mary Lawson’s Booker Prizelonglisted third novel is set in 1972, in the evocatively named Solace, Ontario, a “lonely northern town carved out of the wilderness”. As autumn encroaches, three of its inhabitants are tied together by loneliness and loss.

Eight-year-old Clara’s teenage sister, Rose, is missing. At night she messes up a new set of Rose’s clothes on her bedroom floor, and each day keeps vigil by the window, convinced that: “If she failed to keep watch for her, Rose might not come home.” That window overlooks the house of her neighbour Elizabeth (“Old but nice”), whose cat Clara is feeding while its owner is in hospital. The dying Elizabeth is ready to reckon with the past, and the painful memories of her relationship with Liam, the young boy she once cared for – perhaps too intensely.

Liam, now grown up and divorced, barely remembers the old lady who’s bequeathed him her house. He arrives in Solace and settles into a state of inertia, intending to leave but never managing. He’s never quite been able to connect with people: “It was as if there were a river, not wide but dark and deep, between himself and others, and he’d never figured out how to cross it.” Soon, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of the townspeople, and in particular the nervous Clara.

Lawson’s writing is clear and emotive; and while the balance between the missing Rose and Elizabeth’s past falls somewhat off kilter as the novel progresses, Clara remains its most compelling character. Her instinctive anxiousness and confusion are simply and superbly drawn: “She was more afraid every day and she didn’t even know what of.” She feels let down by the lies her parents tell her to protect her (“Adults in general were less reliable than they should be”). But in this poignant novel, rightfully recognised by the Booker judges, the steadfastness of children brings solace to lost grown-ups.