‘Throughout my examination by her, she has been scrupulously polite. This does not alter the fact that she frightens me, her unnatural composure, her air of knowing something infinitely useful that the rest of us have yet to learn.’ (Prologue: Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard)
The coolly assimilating intelligence of Louise Doughty’s first person narrator in Apple Tree Yard, whose apparent detachment and self control have governed her scientific career and life choices, finds herself shockingly in Crown Court for a crime we wait to name.
We are immediately intrigued, our senses uneasily attuned to the strange title of the novel and the Prologue’s icy progression through courtroom protocol towards the unnerving question demanded by the ‘polite’ barrister that: ‘You are familiar, aren’t you?’ says Ms Bonnard in her satin sinuous voice, ‘with a small back alley way called Apple Tree Yard.’
Here polite stealth has found its destination and the suggestive sibilance of the ‘satin sinuous voice’ makes us shudder as we recognize the intimacy the narrator shares with this ‘alleyway’, an intimacy that brings the narrator to this dismantling moment in both the Crown Court room and her life.
The narrator’s response can only be ‘yes’ and what follows is the catastrophic reason why: all filtered through one of the most effective and affecting uses of a first person narrative I have read in recent fiction.
This is a brilliantly compelling thriller which makes us recognize that a moment’ s lapse of self control and judgment; a brief flirtation with a riskier, more impetuous self, can alter our life forever.
