by Sadie Jones
First published 2009
Lewis Aldridge comes home from his army service to find civilian life harder than combat. His marriage to Kit feels like a performance they both struggle to maintain. The small English town where they settle offers no refuge from the demons Lewis carries. His drinking grows worse. His temper flares without warning. Kit watches her husband disappear behind a wall of silence and rage she cannot breach. Their young marriage buckles under the weight of what Lewis cannot say about his past. The couple moves from place to place, searching for a fresh start that always slips away. Lewis wants to be the man Kit deserves, but the war changed something fundamental inside him. Kit loves the man she married, but that man seems lost forever. Their story unfolds in 1950s England, where talking about psychological wounds remains taboo and veterans suffer alone.
Genres: fiction, drama, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-driven, emotional-journey, lost-identity, marriage-in-crisis
Setting: England
Period: 1950s
443 pages · Paperback · Vintage
Content warnings: mental-illness, substance-abuse