To The Last Page

The truth and facing up to it can be a scary thing, particularly when you look around at the reality of the world we are living in today. There are few authors so attuned to the nature of truth and the scary implications of it than Claire North; her ability to find different ways of exploring it are continuously inventive and, despite the sometimes fantastical setting, eerily plausible. Her latest novel The Pursuit of William Abbey is another terrifying experience. It’s not just that North’s observations about human nature and its relationship with the truth that are pertinent and terrifying in their implications, but her writing makes it painfully real, and that can be hard to bear. And in a way, North’s necessity to deal with the painful realities are mirrored in the protagonist of her latest novel. William Abbey is a doctor working on the front during the First World War, an experience that for many revealed the ugly truth of the nature of war, the people who wage it and the ordina...