Lucy Beresford

Campus Affairs

Truth and Consequences

By

Chatto & Windus 232pp £15.99 order from our bookshop

There is something unsettling about an Alison Lurie novel, and Truth and Consequences is a good example. Initial impressions are of convention. There are no tricksy titles to the chapters, no postmodern self-conscious narrators, no drug-pushers, no faddish multiculturalism. Her characters have traditional names and do ordinary things: men eat ham sandwiches, and women wear shirt-waisters. You always feel you ought to know where you stand in Lurie World, and to some extent, by the end of her novels, you do. And yet her novels are deceptive. Her writing shocks in small ways, and the after-shocks linger.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Why did the 'bold and determined' Empress Matilda never manage to become Queen regnant? Peter Marshall reviews a n… ,
    • From the Archive: Martyn Bedford on Ian McEwan's 'Atonement' ,
    • In 'Silenced Voices' reports the ongoing story of the human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been… ,
    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    Follow Us