The Loss Adjustor

by Aifric Campbell

Every Sunday, Caro finds herself back in the place where it all began, lured there by memory, guilt and all the losses she cannot reconcile. Constantly dwelling on the past, she immerses herself in work, where long hours insulate her from the world. For Caro, the present is two dimensional: it is history that is loaded with colour and scent. Sometimes she tries to get some perspective on those years, going over that terrible summer twenty years ago, when her band of three inseparable friends disintegrated forever. Estelle died two weeks after her fifteenth birthday. It was sudden, violent, shocking. Afterwards, Cormac left and never returned. Now she waits for release, which comes in the form of an unlikely alliance. Aifric Campbell's second novel is filled with longing, for childhood and the liberating power of friendship.

Genres: Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Aifric Campbell is the author of On the Floor, longlisted for the Orange Prize. Campbell spent thirteen years at Morgan Stanley, where she became the first woman managing director on the London trading floor. She left to earn a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of East Anglia and currently teaches at Imperial College, London. Campbell’s writing has been awarded a fellowship at UCLA and residencies at Yaddo. She is currently at work on a new novel.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/aifric...

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aifric Campbell's 'The Loss Adjustor' is a novel of characters, extremely absorbing and very well-written characters that together make up this remarkable novel.
Caro is a loss adjustor, she spends her life dealing with people who are grieving - for lost possessions and lost loved ones. It is clear that inside, Caro is grieving too - she has suffered loss in her life and these losses have affected her whole life.
Her beloved Father died when she was young and her Mother disappeared into a world of books. Caro's two childhood best friends are lost to her aswell. Estelle died many years ago and her childhood sweetheart Cormac is now a wildly successful rock star who she sees only on the television.
Although Estelle is dead and Cormac only briefly appears towards the end of the novel, it is these two people that make up most of the story. Caro has never recovered from either Estelle's death or Cormac's sudden departure and has allowed these events to colour her life and her feelings for the past twenty years.
It is only when Caro meets Tom and his little dog Jack that she allows any to get a glance of the real her. The scenes where Tom and Caro travel to France to visit the military graveyards are wonderfully poignant. The little terrier dog Jack almost steals the show, a fabulous characterful animal.
This is not a light-hearted read, but it is a beautifully crafted story. The characters spring to life and the story is absorbing.

[Amy McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yearning is so relatable 🫣

[Kemi Bon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think that a book so small (cause I love big books) could be so compelling. The tale is gripping, the characters were few yet original. The beauty of the book for me is the subject of loss. Knowing that we all experience loss in one form or the other, seeing Caro struggle with her childhood loss is sad yet real. I really liked the way the author gave life to ghosts and the dog, Jack. I could almost see the dog and his many acts of dominance and affection playing out. A very good read, this one.

[Vince Pretzel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Loss Adjustor is a beautifully written novel, its quietness and understated tone belie a great powerhouse of emotions such as passion, regret and how heavily the past weighs upon our shoulders.

Caro (Caroline) Fraser spends her working life assessing the losses of others in her job as a loss adjustor. Ironically she has never addressed the major losses in her own life, the sudden death of her father when she was twelve, the emotional loss of her mother who withdraws following her husband's death, the loss of two of her closest childhood friends, Estelle and Cormac. Post-adolescence, Caro has learned to steel herself against any possible emotional attachments and she leads a solitary, bland existence as a result. However, change is on the horizon in the unlikely shape of pensioner, Tom, and his feisty jack russell, Jack who have also experienced loss but are now willing to face the past.

The Loss Adjustor is an absolute delight to read, absolutely every single word counts and the use of the first person and the present tense adds to this feeling of immediacy, economy and directness. I found myself rooting for Caro to be happy, to take that risk and engage with life instead of living in the past. The author recreates the past very well, capturing the innocence of childhood, the trauma of teenage years, the ups and downs of friendships, showing how the past has moulded Caro into her present emotionally bereft state, frozen in place and haunted by the ghosts of the past. Her childhood friends, Estelle and Cormac, now absent from her life, are actually very vividly presented and you realise what a huge impact they had on her life.

"I do not recall a time when I did not feel my friends' presence on either side of me. I do not remember a single moment when I experienced the solitariness that could have come with being an only child. From the earliest days I was part of both their families and wandered in and out at will."

The story moves from loss to guilt and ends on a note of redemption. This is Aifric's second novel and with such engaging, elegant writing, I am sure that she will go from strength to strength with future novels.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caro is 36 years old and a Loss Adjustor. She has been unable to move on from the effect of childhood losses. This book is as good as it gets in terms of structure, writing and so on.

But perhaps because I had such high expectations of it (having attended a talk given by her and been impressed by how very very interesting she is), I was a little little disappointed. I think it was only because Caro has so little resiliance and there resulted such a waste of an existence. I eagerly awaited her meeting with her childhood sweetheart but...........

Hoping for more from her others

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I feel that Aifric Campbell is making me work too hard as a reader... This story doesn't come easy but the quality of her prose keeps me pinned to her story and, man, what an incredibly powerful punch she delivers. After reading her On The Floor and Semantics of Murder I thought I would be ready for this one. But, no. Campbell got deep inside of me before I knew it and, like a girlfriend you know you should get away from - she delivered something so real, so deep, so true that, in the end, I was willingly blown away by the impact The Loss Adjuster.