Chosen by Lesley Glaister (From Hereford Times)

Chosen by Lesley Glaister

3:44pm Thursday 9th December 2010 in Book Group

SECRETS, deception and betrayal lie at the heart of Lesley Glaister’s 12th novel, Chosen, a book that pulls off the trick of being both readable and thought-provoking, marrying as it does great writing with the pace and tension of the best thrillers.

Dodie’s mother Stella has checked out permanently and Rod, her partner and father of her baby son Jake, has told her he’s leaving and, as if that’s not enough, her younger brother Seth has vanished, reappearing on the other side of the Atlantic, sending Dodie a postcard saying he ‘has been chosen’ and signing off ‘Yours in the Lord’.

So Dodie decides to pre-empt Rod’s departure by booking herself on a flight to the States to retrieve Seth from the Soul Life Centre. When she gets there, Seth is nowhere to be seen though his arrival is always imminent. While she waits, Dodie is unwillingly drawn into life at the centre, mesmerised by the fasting and meditation and possibly something slightly less apparent, but she remains mulishly resistant to the notion that she, too, has been chosen.

Running side-by-side with Dodie’s story is Stella’s sister Melanie’s account of their fractured life, left to fend for themselves as teenagers when their mother ‘died of drink’ and their dad was in Saudi Arabia with his new family. The absence of adults in their lives leaves a space into which the calculating Bogart slides, insinuating himself into their home and into Melanie’s heart. But Bogart has ambitions, and the two parallel stories are on a collision course that will rock Dodie’s world and leave her and her family in grave danger.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lesley Glaister was born in Northamptonshire and grew up in Suffolk, moving to Sheffield, whree she took a degree with the Open University. She was ‘discovered’ by the novelist Hilary Mantel when she attended a course given by the Arvon Foundation in 1989. She lives with her husband between Sheffield, Edinburgh and Orkney. She teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

HOW TO ORDER

Chosen, £9.99 offer price, £7.99 , post and packing free. To order, call the Hereford Times Bookshop on 08430 6000399 or send your cheque or postal order made payable to Hereford Times Bookshop to: Hereford Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston, TR13 0TP. Allow 7-10 working days for delivery. Titles supplied subject to availability. Order online at sparkledirect.com