Louise Doughty | Beauty is a Sleeping Cat

I wanted to read Apple Tree Yard as soon as it was out last year because I’d enjoyed Louise Doughty’s earlier novel Whatever You Love so much. I didn’t really know what to expect, didn’t read any reviews, and so I was glad to find out that not only is the book very different from her earlier novel, but just as good, maybe even better.

Apple Tree Yard tells the story of an affair that goes terribly wrong. Yvonne Carmichael is in her fifties, married with two grown-up kids. She’s a scientist and very successful in her work. Her marriage could be better but yshe and her husband do get along fine. What it is that makes her follow a man and start an affair with him? Boredom? Love—or rather lust— at first sight? Maybe a bit of both.

The book opens with a prologue that gives away a lot. We know Yvonne Carmichael and her lover have been arrested and are being tried and we also know that the prosecution has found out something that could be fatal for Yvonne. I think it’s quite impressive that Louise Doughty managed to give away this much in the prologue and still was able to write a page-turner that held my interest until the last page.

What worked particularly well for me was that large parts of the story were written as if Yvonne was talking to her lover, which was intimate and eerie at the same time.

Apple Tree Yard is the third crime novel with a London setting that I’ve read this year and, once again, the setting is almost a character.

The book is a crime novel but it explores a lot of themes in a very arresting way. Unfortunately mentioning some of them would really spoil the book. One theme I can mention, which is important, is the exploration of a marriage. Yvonne and her husband still share a lot but they are clearly not in love.

Apple Tree Yard is part thriller, part court-room drama, nicely paced, intricately plotted and infused with a bitter-sweet, melancholy mood that is quite rare in crime novels. A very gripping and intense novel.

Two police officers knock on Laura’s door and her life changes forever. They tell her that her nine-year old daughter Betty has been hit by a car and killed. When justice is slow to arrive, Laura decides to take her own revenge.

Whatever You Love is a book of raw emotions. And that from the first moment on when we read about the police knocking on Laura’s door to inform her that her daughter Betty has been killed. Laura is a very emotional woman, she feels everything that happens to her intensely, her reactions are very physical. There are many elements in the book that made me feel uneasy.

The loss of her daughter hits Laura like a cutting knife. The pain is sharp and unbearable. And she is all alone to deal with this as her husband has left her for another woman. After Laura has seen the body of her dead little girl, we go back in time with her to the days when she first met David, Betty’s father.

The early days of their relationship are very passionate, very sexual. David is a strange man, withholding feelings and caring at the same time and also with a love for dangerous behavior like on the day when he holds Laura over a cliff. He might have slipped at any moment or let her fall. Laura is shocked and fascinated at the same time, revolted and attracted.

While she is pregnant with their second child, David meets Chloe. At the time when Betty is killed, he is married to Chloe and they have a baby boy. The end of David’s and Laura’s marriage is ugly. There are fights and jealous outbreaks by both women. Laura gets anonymous phone calls and letters. She never tells David but she is sure they are from Chloe. Once she threatens Chloe and it stops but when Betty is killed, it starts again.

Struggling to overcome her grief, Laura relives the loss of her husband and when she finally hears that the man who killed her daughter in a hit-and run has been let go by the police, she freaks out and decides to take revenge.

From that moment on I thought I knew what was going to happen but I was quite wrong. Things turned out very different from what I expected.

I read this at super speed. I was very captivated. It is well written and has a nice pace that drags you along. There is a lot to identify with even if you have no children. It makes you think about relationships, the end of infatuation, adultery, family, raw and contradictory feelings and emotions like guilt, loss, jealousy and passion. What I liked best about the novel is the fact that there are no easy answers and the characters are complex with some very contradictory traits.