Hand Me Down World

The new tome from Mr Pip author, Lloyd Jones, is a strange and moving tale, a loose thriller, a loose comedy, a loose social commentary on immigrants/migrants and a loose oral history. So many components build to create a vivid tapestry for Jones' main character, an African woman tearing through Europe trying to find the son stolen from her. The book starts with oral histories from a hotel supervisor who watches as Ines, the protagonist, is seduced by a German tourist then tricked into giving her child away (he watches from afar - these details are obscured till Ines takes over the narration), and a police inspector. Both of their obsessions with her reveal more about them than her. Once she takes over the journey and tear through Europe to find her child, the book becomes almost revenge-thriller-ish. It concerns itself with identity, how we embody those identities thrust upon us by those less secure and how we manoeuvre between different social faces. There's an almost Dickensian quality to the prose and it zips along quickly and satisfyingly to make it one of the year's most interesting finds. As a companion with Mr Pip, this book finds Jones at the height of his powers, a modern day storyteller with oodles of personality.