Review of Exposure, by Helen Dunmore

Exposure by Helen Dunmore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The novel Exposure, by British writer Helen Dunmore, is both a Cold-War thriller and a social novel that explores the middle class lives of a husband and wife and their three children living in post-war London. Lily is a Jewish immigrant who escaped Nazi Germany, while Simon, her husband, is a low-level government functionary whose ordinary life masks a secret past. Their lives are turned upside down by a phone call from Simon’s colleague Giles, who has broken his leg and left a top-secret document in a place it is not supposed to be. This phone call causes Simon and Lily’s lives to unravel. Simon ends up in prison, while Lily flees with her children to a remote cottage by the sea in Kent. A refuge less safe than it seems. Dunmore is a master of the small details and atmosphere of daily life: a cup of tea on a rainy day, an apple tart baking in the oven, a childhood game after dark in a rear garden. She draws us into the minds of her characters: their secret fears, their sense of having achieved something good in life and yet their awareness that there could be something different, or something more. For Giles, whose poor health and drinking have left him a shadow of who he once was, Simon is a shining memory from the past. For Simon, Giles represents a part of himself that he has kept discretely buried. Buried secrets, buried identities, buried documents. All risk exposure and bring danger, whether physical or emotional. Dunmore flips back and forth between the characters, building suspense and tension. Through most of the book, I found myself wondering what would happen next--and what happened next was immensely satisfying.



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