The Carer

Perhaps I should know better by now: this is the fifth Moggach novel I have read, and each, while worthy, has returned to the charity shop. She reads perhaps most accurately as an inferior version of Jonathan Coe, attempting to satirise gently middle-class conceits. The Carer does also have a more serious agenda, focusing on the indignities of old age, a somewhat neglected topic in literature. Part one of this work was the strangest, with the “reveal” (the patriarch's carer actually being his illegitimate daughter) being a genuine surprise. The latter two parts were more tedious, though, and the backstory notably less dynamic. Non-consequential in summary, 6/10.

By Deborah Moggach