Somehow—and I don’t know how Swift achieves this—there’s a historical inevitability about every single thing his characters do. Children, beware the paternal instinct whenever it appears in your officially approved and professionally trained mentors.

The book was well written, very thoughtful and with a masterfully thought out plot that linked all the themes of the book.

I’m doing what Crick does, offering thumbnail versions of events in the knowledge that there’s a lot more to be told about them. Nearly forty years later, his son Tom, a history teacher, is driven by a bizarre marital crisis and the provocation of one of his students to forsake the formal teaching of history-and tell stories . So it has come as no surprise to the reader that she tells Tom with complete certainty that Freddie’s death is her fault, and that it—as well as the pregnancy she has just told him about—is now a problem for both of them.

This is more of a collage, disparate elements of different narratives being brought together to make a new picture out of material from the past. For instance, in terms of the coming-together of storylines, there’s that story of how the seemingly terminally shell-shocked soldier becomes one of the lucky ones to be offered caring support in the Atkinsons’ big house. A blow to the head with that same, old-fashioned bottle would definitely help things along, and it would account for the ‘dark, oval bruise’ Tom had seen, wondering as he does so whether Dick and his father had seen it too. I’m three quarters of the way through the novel, and, despite Crick’s supposed openness, there are things in the past that we still don’t know about.Parents and children, and what we seek when they aren’t there, or never existed in the first place…. I saw the film version many years ago and always meant to read the book - glad that I finally did so. This third-person version of events isn’t unusual, as Crick narrates the story, or history, of this unfulfilled couple. And, the most pressing practical problem being her pregnancy, he defers to her in this when she tells him she knows what to do….