This is not a new story. Artist father ruins his children in so many ways by being an egocentric monster. The catalyst for discovering this is the marriage of the artist to a much younger woman and then his death. However, I really enjoyed this book and read it in my customary two days which is the first book this year that I have felt like that about.

The premise of the narrative is that in amongst all that family grief and trauma, Joyce shows us how easy it is to misinterpret people, actions and things they say so that we can twist it to believe the worst when actually it was meant quite innocently. Joyce plays with how we see ourselves, how our insecurities and desire to be noticed by a father, and how others see us. This tangled twist of emotions also veers into a murder mystery occasionally showing us that swift change in our beliefs when trying to make sense of something. Each little clue can cause enormous swings.

Vic Kemp seems to be have been modelled on Jack Vettriano – can popular art really be called art? Is it ‘good’ art? Does it bring in money? Yes. Enough to buy a villa on an island in Italy which the family have enjoyed a significant part of their childhood and adulthood to date. But here, there is the mystery of Vic’s last painting which he talks about incessantly but no one can find any evidence of despite searching his flat and the villa.

What Joyce does paticularly well is give us a picture of this family as they implode, their resentments, their roles in a family without a mother and how easy it is to get stuck in that role.