Salvage

by Gee Williams

Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Fiction Prize, this is a remarkably assured, suspenseful, and psychologically rich first novel about the secrets that unravel when a couple find a diamond ring?with a finger attached?washed up on a beach   On the brink of scandal, five characters bound by marriage, friendship, and lust attempt to rescue what is most important to them. Through interwoven narratives, the dangers of our personal fictions are explored in a dark, compelling mystery that begins on a stretch of the desolate Welsh coast, when Elly Kent discovers a ring?with a finger still attached. Written in the brilliantly vivid, vernacular prose of everyday lives, this is a taut, engrossing study of betrayal, self-justification, and the consequences of rewriting the past.

212 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 15, 2008

About the author

Gee Williams: Gee Williams was born and brought up on a North Wales council estate. Her first paid employment (at 12) was for dodgy horsedealers — wonderful training amongst the best fictioneers on earth. After studying literature she went on to lecture. She began as a poet but turned to fiction and drama for BBC Radio 4. Next came editing and reviewing, literary journalism and radio broadcasting. She has lived in various parts of Britain, moving with her physicist husband. She is the winner of the Pure Gold Fiction Award, the Rhys Davies Short Story Prize, has been shortlisted for the Richard Imerson Award, the James Tate Black Memorial Fiction Prize and the Wales Book of the Year Award.

Reviews

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book club selection and definitely an interesting (if, at times, over-written) read which, at the start, seems to be a murder mystery and then takes an interesting diversion into a study in friendship and manipulation.

Set comparatively locally and, like Clare Mackintosh's crime novels, lacking the geographical ignorance of the Simon MacLeave series - how is it possible to reposition the sea for heavens's sake! - this opens with the discovery of a very expensive looking diamond ring washed ashore on the beach at Aberhiw (a renamed Abersoch?) still attached to the remnants of a finger... However, this is far from a police procedural, in fact, no DI or CID team features at all as the narrative shifts across to Chester and arrogant surgeon Richard who, unsurprisingly, suffers from a God complex in his huge house on the banks of the Dee and inflicts misery on his long suffering wife through constant philandering with an array of young nurses, one of whom seems to have disappeared...