Home truths

There were three possible reasons given for the disappearance of the two hikers on Mount Nyangani: the treacherous terrain and climate, the banditos armados; the forgiving spirit called Chirikudzi. In David's case there was a fourth - that Clare might have killed him. Unable to remember exactly what happened on the mountain in Zimbabwe and trying to come to terms with the loss of her hand in the accident, Clare is taken home to Scotland where her large, loving, questioning, and uncomfortably acute family become almost unbearable. She had wanted David dead, but did that mean she had killed him? Her mother's High Church concern, Anni's sharp-tongued radicalism, saintly Felicity's internal fury, and her deaf niece Alice's fascination with the prosthetic hand seem at first to distract from Clare's problems, until the aristocratic family's pieties pierce her cocoon of post-traumatic amnesia. Family resentments flare and fade, divisions fester and heal, and as Clare uncovers buried fears, she comes to understand that the real question about the accident on Mount Nyangani is less what she has forgotten than why. Intricate in design, disturbing in its explorations of mind and spirit, and with a surprising twist at the end, Ancestral Truths employs a striking narrative voice to explore the shifting relations between belief and truth, love and desire, to reveal that beauty and danger walk hand in hand. Sara Maitland summons her knowledge of theology, mysticism, mathematics, and human nature to give this deeply perceptive novel its wit and cohesive richness. As Ms. Maitland's characters gradually recognize the inseparability of their strengths and weaknesses, the author of Three Times Table raises her art to a new pitch of excitement and originality.