Enter thirtyish Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, where he promptly moves into the house next door--watched suspiciously by astonished and dismayed Clara, whose elderly friend, Mrs. But the subplot doesn’t bring a lot to the story, which is at its best when the focus is on the old lady leaving Solace, and the young man arriving.

Through long walks in nature as she finds a true sense of belonging, connectivity, renewal and hope, so do we, her readers. Its resolution seems hurried as well, which is a shame as the rest of novel moves at a perfect pace.It also manages to be a page turner as the reader races to find the connection between Mrs Orchard and Liam.

I enjoyed Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages (Fourth Estate), narrated with verve and ingenuity by an actual book, a novel by Joseph Roth, which got saved from the Nazi bonfire and then taken on a picaresque journey across the Atlantic and back to Germany. BookWorm’s Thoughts: While I really enjoyed this book and absolutely loved the character of Clara I have to say it feels too light weight for the Booker Longlist. The descriptions of town life are delightful and I loved the colourful secondary characters almost as much as the main characters. Read alongside Jeremy Farrar’s more personal Spike: The Virus v The People (Profile) and Michael Lewis’s compelling The Premonition (Allen Lane), we see a disturbing common trait emerging in our country and others: the unwillingness to prioritise people’s lives over ideas and ingrained structures.After settling down, she wrote short fiction for women’s magazines and then graduated to her first novel. Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, moves into the house next door, a house left to him by an old woman he can barely remember and within hours gets a visit from the police. I like a novel to grab me and The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate) by Ruth Ozeki gave me very peculiar dreams for a long time, as though it did not want to release me to other things.