A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter

A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter
Buy A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: General Fiction
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: A slow and steady start which builds into some tight plotting. A wriyter to watch for the future.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 400	Date: March 2012
Publisher: Quercus
ISBN: 978-0857382757
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There were five friends - Dylan, Brian, Tallis, Cameron and Elliot - but then Dylan was killed in a road accident and the remaining four had to come to terms with how the dynamics of the group had changed. Dylan had always been the fixer, the solver and the mediator. He'd been the one the other four had gone to when they had problems because he'd always come up with something and it was usually an ingenious solution. It wasn't until after Dylan's death that the four friends realised that Dylan knew their dirtiest secrets - and that someone else had access to all the information.

Part of the baggage of growing older is the memory of those things which you wish you hadn't done, but the four friends each have a particular need to keep the knowledge of their failings secret. There's the essay which was bought from someone else, the question of who really was driving when a car crashed, a rape, a teacher-pupil relationship and information which could destroy marriage. Not only did Dylan know all about what had happened - it seems that he had kept documentary evidence too. But who is trying to blackmail the four friends?

Our narrator is Elliot: self-absorbed and isolated, prone to over-examine everything. He's not exactly unreliable as a narrator, but there's a certain naivety about other people's motives and intentions. He was also the one who was closest to Dylan and who finds it difficult to come to terms with the fact that Dylan wasn't what he thought he was. Each year since the five left college they've had an annual get-together - some guy-time - in Las Vegas. This year it would be just the four of them, but Brian has brought his girl-friend along.

It's a tawdry setting which eloquently reflects the secrets of these four men - and the lengths to which they'll go to keep them hidden. Kirsten Tranter's writing is tight, with not a wasted word. It's not just the story of five friends which will put you in mind of Donna Tart's The Secret History - it's the writing too. You're taken inexorably down certain tracks - whether you want to go there or not. The build up is steady - even slow - and by the time I got to the second half of the book I really couldn't see where we were going. We liked The Legacy and Tranter is definitely someone to watch out for in the future.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

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