Forget good cheer: Nell Leyshon’s West Country is a dark and significant place where the only apples going spare are full of tainted knowledge. On stage, Leyshon’s loaded scraps of dialogue, and tense, poetical interest in family dysfunction helped her win the Evening Standard’s most promising playwright award in 2005. On page, in her new novel ‘Devotion’, her trademark elements feel more exposed: some dialogue-heavy scenes leave a lot to the imagination, though they rattle along, ratcheting up tension as they go.
Infusing domestic events with a creepily obscure expectation of danger is one of Leyshon’s great strengths: it’s not clear until the climax which of the novel’s damaged characters the threat is coming from. The story is passed deftly between four family members: mother Rachel; her mantid-obsessed husband Andrew (recently ejected from their home); their troubled teen Grace (who cuts school but takes care of her little sister); and young Tilly, who doesn’t understand what’s happening, but nevertheless cares profoundly about it.
The novel relies a little too much on Tilly’s artlessness and the girls’ sympathetic predicament: ‘You’re like a bitch on heat,’ says Grace’s mother, casting an unmerited stone from a very glassy house indeed. And surely there should be some kind of law against introducing religious non-characters solely in order to daub the bedroom walls of your book with creepy bible extracts.
Sinister scientific entries from ‘Mantids and Other Dictyoptera’ also belabour the central metaphor (‘praying’ and ‘preying’ mainly just rhyme). Still the male-devouring mantid makes a disgusting symbol for, well, just about everything from sexual awakening to marital and mental breakdown. And not a cider in sight.
