WHERE THE SERPENT LIVES
By Ruth Padel (Little, Brown £12.99)
Ruth Padel is a prize-winning poet and acclaimed 非，不，無-fiction author. She also happens to be Darwin’s 広大な／多数の／重要な-広大な／多数の／重要な-granddaughter, and フクロウs, badgers, deer, city foxes, tigers, a gecko an d snakes flit across the pages of her debut novel, their ways slyly illustrative of the human heart’s shadowier reaches.??
At its centre of her debut novel is Rosamund, the long-苦しむing wife of Tyler, a serially unfaithful music 産業 (n)役員／(a)執行力のある.
Their only child, Russel, 14, has grown 孤立した and 隠しだてする, and Rosamund feels 罠にかける in a 'Gorgon （一定の）期間' of inaction, unable to 直面する her husband, reach her son, or help herself.
The novel （期間が）わたるs a 選び出す／独身, life-altering year, splicing Rosamund's story with those of her best friend Irena, who lives in Devon, Irena's husband Richard, a snake 専門家 who spends most of his time in Indian ジャングルs, and Anka, a Croatian musician and one of Tyler's innumerable girlfriends.
It is Padel's poet's 注目する，もくろむ that alights on the way a fox's coat '向こうずねs like conkers, fresh-分裂（する）,' but it's her s ense of rhythm that has her switching so effortlessly between 場所s and viewpoints.
Infidelity, stillbirth, 選び出す／独身 parenthood, 移民／移住, the 苦境 of 危うくするd 種類 and the war in Iraq - all are shoehorned in, and if the 傾向 of the 7/7 爆破s 脅すs to overpower subtler 観察s, it remains an intensely readable parable of love and 恐れる.
