Sometimes, one can own a book for a very long time before getting round to reading it. Well I can, anyway. It's not a habit I'm proud of, but it feels more or less inevitable, since although I read a lot of books each year, I acquire even more. This is my excuse for not reading John Bowen's The Precious Gift since I acquired the paperback edition in 1993 - alas, it was a review copy that I didn't have time to review. My mistake...
John Bowen was a novelist and playwright, but possibly best known as a TV scriptwriter (not to be confused, by the way, with T.R. Bowen). Among many other credits, he wrote for Wilde Alliance and co-created Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. The Precious Gift first appeared in 1992 and bears laudatory quotes from Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, neither of whom scattered praise around lightly. So why I took so long to read it, I really can't explain.
I'm so glad I finally did read this novel. The writing is excellent, with an undercurrent throughout of dry wit. It's interesting for several reasons, and especially because he chose as a protagonist a young woman with a small baby. Risky, but I think he succeeds admirably in capturing the character and lifestyle of Sarah Arnott, a stubborn yet likeable woman whose life changes forever after the discovery of a skeleton in the grounds of the house she shares with her husband Simon.
The skeleton is of a youngish woman who was pregnant and who must have been dead for more than forty years. It's clear she was murdered and buried to hide evidence of the crime. Sarah becomes obsessed with trying to find out who she was and what happened to her, taking her lead from detectives in Crime Club novels (these references supply part of the fun). One might quibble that the motive for the crime, when eventually uncovered, is a bit far-fetched, but no matter. This really is a very good story, which had me gripped from start to finish.
4 comments:
Bowen also wrote a wonderful neo-SF novel AFTER THE RAIN which I consider an underrated classic and which echoes the works of John Wyndham and JG Ballard.
I don't know about that one, Maxim, but I shall seek it out 'when I get a moment'
John Bowen's nephew turned up on Antiques Roadshow the other day, with a piece he'd inherited from Bowen (he and his partner had looked after Bowen for the last few years of his life). That's not particularly interesting in itself, other than "John Bowen" turning up rwice within a few days after (sorry!) not having given him a moment's thought for a good few years.
A strange coincidence to be sure, Ian!
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