With this year’s getaways so uncertain, summer reading feels less of an indulgence than a vital source of escape. Amanda Craig’s new novel, The Golden Rule, is an ideal contender for such times, offering comfort and wit, compassion and philosophical stimulation, all played out against the backdrop of Cornwall’s subtropical splendour.
Its protagonist is Hannah, whose bookish ways let her succeed where her mum failed, fleeing their ungentrified seaside town for a degree at Durham and a promising career in advertising. Austenesque heroine that she imagined herself to be, she snagged a husband at university, too: handsome, aristocratic Jake, who reveals his ugly side only after Hannah accidentally becomes pregnant. By the time we meet her, she’s a single mum on a council estate, cleaning houses to support their young daughter. Along with her confidence, she’s lost her guiding belief in literature’s life lessons.
On a train to Cornwall to be at her dying mother’s bedside, an encounter with a woman named Jinni, who seems all that Hannah once longed to be, results in a Strangers on a Train-style pact: each woman will murder the other’s ex. Credible? It’s a stretch, though Craig makes strenuous efforts to explain Hannah’s motivation. Crucially, it leads her to Stan, a hulking, hairy video game designer whose manner seems ripped from the playbook of Mr Rochester et al. Stan is holed up in a crumbling cliff-edge mansion whose densely wooded grounds will prove balm for both their souls during what becomes a summer of self-discovery.
Craig is a state-of-the-nation writer, and there is plenty to chew on in her 10th book: here is a Britain starkly divided along many lines: class, region and the Brexit vote being just a few. The novel is tirelessly socially engaged, addressing ills from domestic violence (against both genders) to Generation Rent and the gig economy, giving the reader enough of a moral workout to permit guilt-free revelling in its escapist elements, which include exquisite descriptions of handpainted wallpaper and vintage Dior, along with a feminist fairytale of a romance.
The Golden Rule derives a good deal of momentum from the tension between Craig’s more fanciful imaginings and her documentarian urges. Impressively, its closing scene brings together both dimensions of her craft in a heart-tugging, hopeful finale that is at once entirely believable, and also channels those novels that first led a less wise Hannah astray.
• The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig is published by Little, Brown (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
