Emma Tennant — Strangers

Vintage 1999 Paperback, 183pp. Based on fact, but told with the imagination of a novelist, STRANGERS is the story of the author's family, the Tennants. Margot Asquith and Pamela Tennant (nee Wyndham), warring sisters-in-law; Pamela's children, her 'jewels' - Clare the wilful beauty, Stephen Tennant the outrageous aesthete, David the nightclub king, and the steady, sensible Christopher who becomes head of the family when the eldest brother Bim dies on the Somme - these are some of the characters brought to sudden and not always respectable life in this funny, touching and sometimes shocking novel. Their antics, dreams and grief are witnessed by the maid Louisa, and played out chiefly at Glen, the castle in the border of Scotland, where the young narrator pulls from long-sealed cupboards the stories of her family's past. But as the secrets emerge the myth woven around the glamorous figures of the past is both enhanced and dispelled. Haunting and compelling, STRANGERS presents a family and its young detective in a startling light. (ISBN: 9780099273875). Good.