Charles Lambert
Belgravia Books, 23 March 2023
Available as: PB, 256pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781913547288
I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Birthright to read and consider for review.
Birthright is a twisty, wicked story, a story of identity, loss and yearning, and it's just brilliant.
Fiona is growing up to a privileged lifestyle in England. She has wealthy parents and an expensive boarding school - but also a feeling that something is just, well, off. She got on better with her father than her mother, and when he dies, resents her for ending the regular holidays in Italy during which she met handsome Lorenzo and his friends. Her mum's stuffy, Thatcher-worshiping friends repel Fiona (this is the late 70s/ early 80s) and a friend she makes at school shows her the delights of a chaotic household where feelings are accepted and spoken about.
Maddy, in contrast, has grown up in poverty (albeit the sort of hippyish, self-inflicted poverty adopted by rebellious children of privilege, fun until the money runs out). She has never known a father, her mother dallying with a series of men, some merely useless, others positively dangerous (there are some truly dark episodes described). Age, shortage of money and circumstance have left the two washed up in a grim flat in Rome, which is where Fiona becomes aware of Maddy - the two young women have an uncanny resemblance to one another.
When Fiona discovers this, she becomes Maddy's obsessive stalker, deeply, creepily jealous of the other girl and determined to prove a link between them, despite their very different backgrounds. That aspect of the story - kind of a detective mystery with a psychological twist - makes this an easy book to get into. Add in a handsome charmer - Fiona's jailbird boyfriend - and the romantic streets of Rome, and Lambert has produced a heady, painful but clinically well-observed story with plenty of twists and turns.
But there's more besides. Beneath the mystery of the two young women, a central theme here is envy, the sense that Fiona (but also, Maddy, to a degree) have that the other is luckier, happier, possessed of something they don't. One's sympathies ping pong between them. Fiona's clearly had a very chilly upbringing, but then, she is going to be very wealthy, she literally wants for nothing, so, one might think, she can at least be unhappy in comfort and will have time and space to sort out what she wants in life. Instead she determines that she will be Maddy's sister, and that that will make everything right for her.
If only. Maddy herself has a very complex relationship with her alcoholic mother, but still resents Fiona's restless, prowling attentions and doesn't want their not-so-perfect life turning upside down. The emotional temperature between Fiona and Maddy is high, the pages fairly crackling with electricity, with attempts at understanding, unreasonable expectations and some spectacular tantrums. Neither very likeable, the reader will I think come to understand and sympathise with both, wishing that they might find some way to accept one another's existence - or perhaps, to separate and get on with their separate lives.
But it seems they can do neither. I had to remember that despite both having, in different ways, an apparently sophistication in the ways of the world, they are both, really, very very young and the upbringing of neither has really been conducive to emotional maturity and understanding. You couldn't really imagine two women less suited to navigating the storms of longing and resentment that they find themselves in (not to speak of a complex romantic rivalry that develops).
That complexity was one of the things that for me made Birthright such an excellent read. The book has it all - brilliantly depicted characters, greater and greater tension and beautiful Roman atmosphere and settings (you will feel you are there!) (Also, smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. After all, it is set in the 70s and 80s.)
Best of all though, it really draws the reader in, putting her or him in Fiona's place, in Maddy's.
What would you do, you'll wonder? What would you want? How would I get out of this? Would I even try? Where will it all lead?
All in all, Birthright is a fantastic book, one I'd heartily recommend. Do give it a try.
For more information about Birthright, see the publisher's website here.
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