AMANDA

In 1926 England, two people—a young woman desperate to avoid her former lover and that former lover, equally desperate to find her—struggle with despair and spiritual doubt.

Marion and Jamie—both known by several names in a book where identity is fluid and characters enjoy sexual role-play—have not seen each other since Marion left England the year before. Now she has returned and begun a temporary job as a governess. Outwardly competent, she carries on a disturbing internal dialogue about her past—a girlhood in Ireland that ended in abusive sex and violence, her escape to a new identity in Oxford, the ecstasy of her love affair with Jamie—along with her current guilt, regret, and fear of mental illness. The reader is uncertain just how damaged Marion is when Jamie’s narrative takes over. He too is clearly competent in his professional life. The boarding school that was central to Cross’ first and second novels, Wilberforce (2015) and Grievous (2019), plays an ancillary role here; while engrossing, Jamie’s efforts to solve the school’s problems take a backseat to his emotional turmoil. Bedeviled by various forms of guilt about his past, especially during the war, he struggles to connect with his ailing Anglican Bishop father, whom Jamie assumes disapproves of him. Above all, he is baffled by why Marion disappeared from his life and is obsessed with finding her. His optimism about their possible future together initially seems in sharp contrast to her resistance. Is he delusional too? Gradually, though, the separate dark stories of their emotional crises evolve into a love story that verges on romantic comedy, complete with miscues, disguises, and the bishop’s manipulations. Along the way, Cross tackles such small issues as faith, the Easter Rebellion, and British classism. The elliptical style isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. That Cross’ voice—some combination of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen—comes from a contemporary American writer is hard to believe.

Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.