Charles Redfern is in a coma. As he lies motionless
in hospital, his wife Anne and daughter Charlotte are forced to come
together to confront their relationships with him - and with each
other.
Anne, once regarded as
beautiful and clever, has felt herself disappearing for years, paling
beside her husband's harsh brilliance. Anxious to fit in with the
expectations of the people around her, she keeps her disillusionment
buried inside, mechanically attending the endless round of drinks
parties and dinners in her keenly social neighbourhood, and trying to
ignore the guilt that trails behind her like a
shadow.
Charlotte, battling an
inner darkness that threatens to overwhelm her, is desperate to prevent
her relationship with not-yet-divorced Gabriel from disintegrating
through her own self-sabotage.
As the full truth of
Charles's hold over them emerges into the light, both women must come to
terms with the choices they have made, and the uncertainty of a future
without the figure that has dominated them for so
long.
Elizabeth Day's debut novel
speaks beautifully and frankly about the banal horror of fractured
relationships and the uncomfortable truths behind smiling family
photographs. Poetic, absorbing and deeply moving, Scissors,
Paper, Stone is a story of damage, survival and restoration,
and of the powerful ties that bind us together.