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Nov 06, 2018jenniferrabbit rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Good writing, good characterization, carefully woven plot, but I didn’t really like it. Toby, a young man who works in an art gallery is beat up by burglars and left for dead. He does not completely recover physically, including some brain damage and PTSD issues. He moves to a family country house to take care of a dying uncle. Renewing relationships with cousins brings up hints of forgotten past episodes, and then police show up to investigate a skeleton found in the hollow of a big elm in the garden. Because Toby has holes in his memory and overwhelming anxiety the reader can’t tell reality from fantasy, or whether the other characters are presenting honest pictures of the past. I found this interesting enough to keep reading (the writing is great) but the ending was unsatisfactory to me, and on the whole, I would not give it a rousing recommendation.