Books: THE WINE IS RED

Kate Nivison

They say novels set in Africa written from an expat’s viewpoint don’t sell these days. For good measure, this one has 2 such viewpoints, both of them aspects of Clare Haywood. In the ‘first person’ voice Clare is telling her story to a friend (maybe you, the reader). The other is her own internal narrative. But which one is the true version? The reader is left to decide what really happened when Clare goes back with her friend Joanne to visit Father Richard Kerrigan as she falls under the spell of the house by the river and its people – Brother Linus, Father Tom, Elizabeth the cook and old Baba the nightwatch – while once again, the place and the man she loves seem to be falling apart.