The Three Graces by Amanda Craig review – trouble in paradise | Fiction

Age shall not wither us, but sometimes it feels a close-run thing, particularly if your joints are grinding so painfully that even the keys of your beloved piano represent torture; or if your house is suddenly over-run with an insouciantly carefree younger generation; or if wildly misplaced loyalty means that you are tethered to your hateful but dramatically enfeebled husband. Such are the terms and conditions that life has dictated to, respectively, Marta, Ruth and Diana, three friends whose Tuscan retirements are distinctly more constrained and convoluted than any of them would wish.

The reader is similarly discombobulated by excessive activity, for Amanda Craig’s thoroughly enjoyable novel is packed with incidents and themes. Its setting is a valley more populous than Piccadilly Circus: a Russian oligarch on the run from Putin has taken up residence in a grand palazzo, his henchmen ever watchful for assassination attempts; a gaggle of London financiers have descended for the Insta-perfect wedding of Ruth’s grandson to a social media influencer; in abandoned agricultural buildings, people traffickers incarcerate their desperate human cargo. For those born and raised on the hillsides – particularly Enzo Rossi, whose act of violence kickstarts the entire story – daily life has become unrecognisable.

Everyone at this carnival wears a mask, and each colludes to varying degrees in maintaining the fantasy. Those with little or nothing to lose, like Blessing, the young Zimbabwean gay man who is taken to be a wedding guest and realises that the incuriosity of others provides a slim chance for him to transform his life, provide the novel’s counterpoint. But Craig is keen to acknowledge that even those with apparent advantage might be far less powerful than their social and societal capital suggests; one of the narrative’s most affecting strands revolves around the bride, Tania, whose online celebrity is at sharp odds with the hidden trauma of sexual violence and alienation.

The Three Graces features a number of characters from previous novels, including A Private Place, The Lie of the Land and The Golden Rule, and although it’s not necessary to have read those earlier works, Craig’s continuing interest in exposing the fault lines of class, wealth and the inequality of opportunity is striking. Here, she examines the specifics of racial discrimination, rural poverty, marital abuse and the depredations of age and infirmity against what can superficially be read as a comedy of manners, or a charming iteration of a Shakespearean marriage plot. As she capably demonstrates, however, surface reality can only hold for so long.

Age shall not wither us, but sometimes it feels a close-run thing, particularly if your joints are grinding so painfully that even the keys of your beloved piano represent torture; or if your house is suddenly over-run with an insouciantly carefree younger generation; or if wildly misplaced loyalty means that you are tethered to your hateful but dramatically enfeebled husband. Such are the terms and conditions that life has dictated to, respectively, Marta, Ruth and Diana, three friends whose Tuscan retirements are distinctly more constrained and convoluted than any of them would wish.

The reader is similarly discombobulated by excessive activity, for Amanda Craig’s thoroughly enjoyable novel is packed with incidents and themes. Its setting is a valley more populous than Piccadilly Circus: a Russian oligarch on the run from Putin has taken up residence in a grand palazzo, his henchmen ever watchful for assassination attempts; a gaggle of London financiers have descended for the Insta-perfect wedding of Ruth’s grandson to a social media influencer; in abandoned agricultural buildings, people traffickers incarcerate their desperate human cargo. For those born and raised on the hillsides – particularly Enzo Rossi, whose act of violence kickstarts the entire story – daily life has become unrecognisable.

Everyone at this carnival wears a mask, and each colludes to varying degrees in maintaining the fantasy. Those with little or nothing to lose, like Blessing, the young Zimbabwean gay man who is taken to be a wedding guest and realises that the incuriosity of others provides a slim chance for him to transform his life, provide the novel’s counterpoint. But Craig is keen to acknowledge that even those with apparent advantage might be far less powerful than their social and societal capital suggests; one of the narrative’s most affecting strands revolves around the bride, Tania, whose online celebrity is at sharp odds with the hidden trauma of sexual violence and alienation.

The Three Graces features a number of characters from previous novels, including A Private Place, The Lie of the Land and The Golden Rule, and although it’s not necessary to have read those earlier works, Craig’s continuing interest in exposing the fault lines of class, wealth and the inequality of opportunity is striking. Here, she examines the specifics of racial discrimination, rural poverty, marital abuse and the depredations of age and infirmity against what can superficially be read as a comedy of manners, or a charming iteration of a Shakespearean marriage plot. As she capably demonstrates, however, surface reality can only hold for so long.