Review: THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, Margie Orford

• 
  this edition made available on Kindle via Amazon
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09NW1XS2K
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canongate Books (July 7, 2022)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 321 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

When danger lies in the eye of the beholder, what happens when you reject its pull?

Cora carries secrets her daughter can’t know.
Freya is frightened by what her mother leaves unsaid.
Angel will only bury the past if it means putting her abusers into the ground.

One act of violence sets the three women on a collision course, each desperate to find the truth. In a nail-biting thriller set between the scorched red soil of South Africa, the pitiless snowfields of Canada and the chilly lochsides of western Scotland, each woman must contend with the spectres of male violence, sexual abuse and the choices we each make to keep our souls.

My Take

This was one of those books that felt almost longer than it actually is. Three women's lives converge along what seemed to me improbable lines. Cora is the main thread of the book, but the other two threads are joined to he by both who they are and also by the things that have happened to them.

A very harrowing read.

My rating: 4.6

About the author 

Margie Orford is an award-winning journalist who has been dubbed the Queen of South African Crime Fiction. Her Clare Hart crime novels have been translated into ten languages and are being developed into a television series. She was born in London and grew up in Namibia. A Fulbright Scholar, she was educated in South Africa and the United States, has a doctorate in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and is an honorary fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. She is president Emerita of PEN South Africa and was the patron of Rape Crisis Cape Town while she lived in South Africa. She now lives in London.