Book of the day - Reckless

   

    Just arrived, a novel I've been looking forward to for some months, Reckless by William Nicholson, out on 6th. February.

    This is what the author says about it on his blog today: "It’s my most ambitious to date. Still part of the sequence that began with THE SECRET INTENSITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE, but as with MOTHERLAND I’ve gone back into the past of my characters, this time to 1962. If you read MOTHERLAND you may remember Kitty and Ed’s little girl, Pamela. In the new novel Pamela is 18, and arrives in the London of Stephen Ward and Christine Keeler at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. She’s beautiful, naive, and eager for adventure, with disastrous consequences. I’ve extended my technique of entering the minds of many different characters to the world stage, and re-create the mental processes of Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Mountbatten as the crisis unfolds. There’s a second plot too, about a girl who sees visions of the Virgin Mary…"   

    Motherland was a favourite novel of mine last year, and William Nicholson is a gifted, multi-faceted storyteller, so I'm particularly eager to read his new book.