Shade

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We know from the earliest pages of Neil Jordan's numinous, slow-building fourth novel, <i>Shade</i> that its narrator, 50-old Nina Hardy, has been murdered with a pair of gardening shears by her childhood friend George Truite. The mystery is not who has committed this crime, but why. And although George has been for some years a resident of the local insane asylum, only recently allowed to experiment again with independent living, his madness is but a small part of the answer to that question. Set in Ireland near Drogheda, at the mouth of the river Boyne, <i>Shade</i> casts a wistful eye on childhood desires and alliances, and its lonely-girl-in-a-big-house beginnings will call to mind William Trevor's <i>The Story of Lucy Gault</i>. But like Jordan's greatest success, the film <i>The Crying Game</i>, this novel is full of surprises - and the biggest shocks are not always the most telling.<i> - Jill Harvey</i>