Birdcage Walk: A dazzling historical thriller

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In the first chapter we see a male character burying the body of a female in the woods near the river: all through the book we suspect who the two characters are. And one of the great strengths of the book is its refusal to offer up too patterned or neat a narrative. Barewall Art Gallery based in Burslem, Stoke on Trent established in 2010, offers British 20th century modern and contemporary; art, ceramics and sculpture by artists from and connected to Staffordshire, Cheshire and the North. As Dunmore explicitly acknowledges in a very interesting afterword, one of the key themes to her writing, and what gives it its power, is her ability to tell of great historical events or upheavals from the point of view of those who are integral to events but whose voices have vanished or been marginalised from the historical record: the inhabitants of Leningrad under siege ( The Siege); the family of Cold War spies ( Exposure); Doctors caught in Stalin’s purges ( The Betrayal).

Some reviewers have described the novel as ‘slow’, perhaps because the mystery contained with the story takes a long time to play out alongside the other story lines.I just allowed myself to be enveloped in Dunmore's lyrical language and careful psychological observation.

James’s Park, Birdcage Walk marks the former site of the Royal Aviary, built by James I in the early 17th century to house the royal hunting falcons and hawks. The street is named after the Royal Menagerie and Aviary which were located there in the reign of King James I. The main characters include the maternal, independent, supportive Lizzie and the jealous, iron-fisted, ruined Tredevant. An HQ working group, led by past-president Patrick Kniveton, was set up as a council recommendation, building on the work done by the real estate strategy group. Time has taken away the church which was once attached to the graveyard: it was bombed to rubble in the Second World War.Lizzie visits her mother who is ill, and tells her of her husband's Diner's plans to build a magnificent new terrace overlooking the Gorge. However, Dunmore wrote beautifully, there's no doubt about that; with sensitively portrayed characters and impressive attention to historic detail (though the baby's pap feeder was over-mentioned somewhat) - and I was definitely 'involved' with it all.

There is an atmosphere of Hardyesque unease as a man rows from Bristol to a glade where he has left his dead wife overnight. The atmosphere is tight, constrained, and claustrophobic, as written by Dunmore, pressing down on the reader as Lizzie stumbles her way through this astoundingly important time in her life. Unfortunately while this author has developed characters so well, the storyline that these characters are involved in moves so slow and bores one to tears. While there is no doubting the grisly horror of the events unfolding in Paris, their effect on the novel’s protagonists is too often tangential, the threat more theoretical than real. And the plot, although a little slow in the middle, is laced from start to finish with an underlying feeling of despair and a real, palpable bleakness as the ongoing drama, social strife, economic uncertainty, marital tension, and increasing violence unravels.Her stepfather, Augustus, is an academic in possession of a blind intelligence (I fancy I know his modern equivalent). I loved the description of the birdcages - I felt I could almost touch them from the beautiful images Riordan created. A quiet novel, yet buzzing with life, Birdcage Walk is a landmine of a tale on the human experience. Lizzie’s motivation for marriage to John Diner Tredevant is complicated: part passion and, seemingly, part desire for a place of her own following her mother’s remarriage. Her eyes open and she finds her voice all while being surrounded by a mystery she slowly comes to acknowledge.