Review: The Good Neighbours by Nina Allan

 Happy publication day to The Good Neighbours by Nina Allan! 

Cath is a photographer hoping to go freelance, working in a record shop to pay the rent and eking out her time with her manager Steve. He thinks her photography is detective work, drawing attention to things that would otherwise pass unseen and maybe he's right...

Starting work on her new project - photographing murder houses - she returns to the island where she grew up for the first time since she left for Glasgow when she was just eighteen. The Isle of Bute is embedded in her identity, the draughty house that overlooked the bay, the feeling of being nowhere, the memory of her childhood friend Shirley Craigie and the devastating familicide of her family by the father, John Craigie.

Arriving at the Craigie house, Cath finds that it's occupied by financial analyst Alice Rahman. Her bid to escape the city lifestyle, the anxiety she felt in that world, led her to leave London and settle on the island. The strangeness of the situation brings them closer, leading them to reinvestigate the Craigie murder. Now, within the walls of the Craigie house, Cath can uncover the nefarious truths and curious nature of John Craigie: his hidden obsession with the work of Richard Dadd and the local myths of the fairy folk.

The Good Neighbours is an enquiry into the unknowability of the past and our attempts to make events fit our need to interpret them; the fallibility of recollection; the power of myths in shaping human narratives. Nina Allan skilfully weaves the imagined and the real to create a magically haunting story of memory, obsession and the liminal spaces that our minds frequent to escape trauma. 

The premise of this novel had me intrigued. Cath is a photographer working on a project photographing murder houses. The subject stirs old memories and she returns to a familiar house from her childhood on the Isle of Bute, the home of her best friend Shirley Craigie who was tragically murdered along with her mother and brother, allegedly by her deeply troubled father John - a man who believed in fairies. But something tells Cath that there’s more to the case, and she, along with the house's new occupant Alice, decides to do some investigating of her own...

This may sound like a crime fiction novel, but it’s a real blend of genres. Contemporary crime meets slow burn thriller meets mythology with just a tinge of the supernatural. These allusions to the fairy folk and Queen Mab are what drew me to read this book; I find them fascinating and they are embedded into the plot in a clever and believable way.

I really liked Cath, particularly her friendship with Shirley, and the early chapters detailing them sneaking onto the ferry for a day out in Glasgow as teenagers gave great insight into their characters. Despite their differences in personality, Cath has never forgotten Shirley; her presence is felt throughout the course of the novel and you will for Cath to find out what really happened to her and her family. 

The Good Neighbours is a beautifully written exploration of memory, and of how we interpret events to suit the narrative. This is my first Nina Allan novel but it won’t be my last! 

*Thanks to Quercus Books for the stunning proof copy!*