Great House

The third novel from the immensely talented Nicole Krauss features themes familiar from her canon - loss, inevitability, the pretence of a normal life masking internal implosions – but never feels like it’s retreading well-worn ground. This book is tonally different from The History of Love, and feels all the better for its shattered, fragile jigsaw pieces.

A desk becomes the Macguffin for a series of characters. The desk, given to a writer called Nadia after a brief one night affair with a Chilean poet returning to his home country, becomes symbolic of the loss and tragedy in her life, giving it a heightened sense of importance, especially when years later, a girl claiming to be Varsky the poet’s daughter turns up claiming the desk for herself. The narrative flits between Nadia, the daughter, the husband of the original owner of the desk and an Israeli trying to piece his father’s possessions back together again - multiple strands that start to slowly connect the dots between all characters as their truths and confessions are revealed in this ambitious tale of memory, loss and the burden of responsibility towards our future selves and generations.

While not as wild and exuberant as The History of Love, this is still startling, original stuff, with the desk becoming as pivotal and important a character as everyone it affects, a Maguffin in the Hitchcockian sense, that reveals the journeys towards the truths at the core of our souls.