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APPLE TREE YARD

by Louise Doughty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 2014

Brooding, emotionally complex and powerful.

Sex with an anonymous stranger blows apart a British scientist’s carefully ordered life in London resident Doughty’s seventh novel ( Whatever You Love , 2010, etc.).

We know from the beginning that narrator Yvonne Carmichael is on trial, but we don’t know for what, and we don’t know why she reacts with panic when a barrister begins asking her about a London back alley called Apple Tree Yard. We learn its significance as she unfolds the story of her affair with a man who observes her testifying before a parliamentary committee, strikes up a conversation in the corridor and leads her to a secluded area where they have sex. She doesn’t even know his name, yet they continue having sex for months, most recklessly “in Picadilly, in the rush hour, with a thousand people hurrying by a few meters away”—in Apple Tree Yard, that is, just before Yvonne goes to a professional party where she gets drunk and is brutally raped by a colleague, George Craddock. She can’t tell the police, since a physical exam would find semen inside her not belonging to her assailant; she can’t tell her husband, Guy, “because too much was at stake, our home, our happiness, our children.” Yvonne still loves Guy and, until this affair, hadn’t quite realized how tired she was of their responsible, respectable union. So she tells her lover, who has hinted he works for MI5, and goes along with him when he promises to “frighten the living daylights out of [George].” This violent encounter sends them both to the dock, where she finally learns her lover’s name and the extent of his deceit and betrayal. But Yvonne is no helpless victim; her narration reveals anger and vengefulness, as well as vulnerability and fear. The slightly anticlimactic trial outcome isn’t as interesting as the adult ambiguities Doughty unravels in smooth, sinuous prose, leading to two shocking yet credible final revelations.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-374-10567-9

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013

SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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by Louise Doughty

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

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BOOK TO SCREEN

IndieBound Bestseller

THE SILENT PATIENT

by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

More by Alex Michaelides

by Alex Michaelides

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Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty – review

A respected, middle-aged, married scientist meets a stranger and experiences such a powerful attraction to him that, moments later, she has sex with him in a public place without even learning his name. Is this the thrilling explosion of a passionate nature, long held in check by the demands of propriety and duty? Or a shocking display of moral lassitude, evidence of a wanton character? The answer, of course, will depend on who is making the judgment and – most crucially – the context in which this story is being recounted. When the context is the Old Bailey, and the story is told to the jury about the accused in a murder trial, the act acquires a significance its participants could never have imagined in those hot, heady moments of their first encounter, drawing preconceptions and prejudices like iron filings to a magnet.

Apple Tree Yard , Louise Doughty's seventh novel, shares with her previous books a preoccupation with the "what if" territory of ordinary life, those unthinkable events that divide a life into "before" and "after". Her last novel, the Costa award-shortlisted Whatever You Love , explored the killing of a child and a mother's desire for revenge. In Apple Tree Yard , she gives us the aftermath of an affair, but what begins as a familiar scenario twists away unexpectedly into a story of violent assault and murder. Doughty examines, in the sober light of hindsight, the chain of individual choices that led to the irreversible act that shatters lives and lands her narrator in the dock.

Dr Yvonne Carmichael is a geneticist so eminent in her field that she is invited to speak at parliamentary select committees, which is where her trouble begins. "DNA made me and DNA undid me," she says at the start of her trial. She describes herself as "a pathologically law-abiding woman". At 52, she has a nice house, a long marriage to Guy, also a scientist, and two children. Though this seemingly ordered life is not as neat as it appears on the surface, it has held together through the storms of her husband's infidelity and her son's mental illness. But it cannot survive the forces unleashed by her attraction to a man who tells her he works as a security consultant at the Palace of Westminster. From the moment she surrenders to the thrill of that desire, her life begins to slip out of her control.

Yvonne narrates her story from the dock, switching from the trial to the events that brought her there. She addresses her story to her lover, whom she has deduced is a spy, mostly through an inner monologue but sometimes through letters, written on her computer in the dead of night but never sent, as if she needs to confirm the truth of what has happened to them both by reminding him of the intimate details. Doughty controls the progress of this narrative beautifully, parsing out information with tantalising hints at what is to come, so that we are almost halfway through the book before we learn whose murder Yvonne is accused of, and why, or even her lover's name. Although the outcome is hinted at in the prologue, the drama of the courtroom is sustained until the verdict, as Doughty deftly weaves Yvonne's story with the version presented in fragments by witnesses and lawyers in the courtroom.

For this is principally a novel about stories. "The stories we tell in order to make sense of ourselves, to ourselves," as Yvonne puts it, and the gap between them and the stories others create about us, based on selective facts. A criminal trial is only the presentation of a series of stories, or the same story, told from different angles. As readers, we are on Yvonne's side, privy to her secret account; we know more about her than the jury knows – more, even, than her own barrister or husband know. It is a mark of Doughty's assured touch with the unfolding of her narrative that we believe Yvonne's version of the truth, not realising that perhaps she has been withholding information from us, too.

Apple Tree Yard is a chilling novel, in part because of the unsparing light it shines on our ability to deceive ourselves. Doughty has a particular gift for unsettling stories, for making us ask difficult questions of ourselves, our own relationships and choices, and this is her strongest book yet. It's not a comfortable read, but it is entirely compelling.

• The Observer

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The Literary Edit

Review: Apple Tree Yard – Louise Doughty

After reading  The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – a big book by anyone’s standards – I vowed that the next novel I read would be a quicker read; and one that didn’t result in back ache from lugging its weight around. Thus, I chose Apple Tree Yard, a thriller by Louise Doughty generating much praise on Twitter.

The story begins when Yvonne Carmichael, an eminent geneticist in her early 50s, has a chance sexual encounter with a mysterious stranger in the House of Commons when she is there to give evidence to a parliamentary select committee. The prologue warns the reader how the affair will end – with the central character cross-examined in the dock of the Old Bailey as an accessory to murder – and the tale follows Yvonne as her life begins to unravel.

An angry undertone is evident throughout the novel as themes of violence against women, gender inequality and the consequences of a single drunken mistake are woven together to create the undoing of a happily married middle-aged woman.

The initial suspense the prologue affords Doughty is maintained throughout the novel, which is both cogent and eloquently written. The finest kind of page turner, Apple Tree Yard will have you gripped from start to finish.

About Apple Tree Yard

Yvonne Carmichael sits in the witness box. The charge is murder. Before all of this, she was happily married, a successful scientist, a mother of two. Now she’s a suspect, squirming under fluorescent lights and the penetrating gaze of the alleged accomplice who’s sitting across from her, watching: a man who’s also her lover. As Yvonne faces hostile questioning, she must piece together the story of her affair with this unnamed figure who has charmed and haunted her. This is a tale of sexual intrigue, ruthless urges, and danger, which has blindsided her from a seemingly innocuous angle. Here in the courtroom, everything hinges on one night in a dark alley called Apple Tree Yard.

About Louise Doughty

Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, including Apple Tree Yard, published by Faber & Faber, which was a top 10 bestseller in UK and Ireland and has been published or is being translated into twenty-two languages. It was longlisted for The Guardian Not-the-Booker prize and shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award and the National Book Awards Thriller of the Year. Apple Tree Yard is her first novel since Whatever You Love, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

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Review: Apple Tree Yard, By Louise Doughty

Piercing and potent guilty as charged, article bookmarked.

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Louise Doughty has never steered clear of controversial or harrowing subjects. Her last novel, the Costa shortlisted and Orange longlisted Whatever You Love followed the downward trajectory of a woman's life as she simultaneously faced the death of her daughter and divorce.

That a plummeting spiral is again involved in her seventh novel is evident from the prologue, in which the female protagonist and first-person narrator, in court on a major charge, realises that she is doomed. Throughout, she refers to a second-person “you”, her co-accused, whom she loves. And yet, she also lets slip that her husband is kind and supportive. Welcome to Louise Doughty's world in which individuals are complex and fallible.

The story then shifts back in time. Our protagonist, Yvonne, is a high-achieving geneticist, happily married, with two children. She has had traumas – she lost her mother to suicide at the age of eight; her son is bipolar – but she copes, as modern women must. And then, one day, she does something reckless and potentially dangerous. To say she is subsequently sucked into a thrilling and risky situation would be far too passive. Yvonne walks in willingly.

Doughty, like Zoë Heller, Rachel Cusk and Tessa Hadley, drops sharp, shiver-inducing insights, like winter raindrops, on every page. Yvonne's feelings after a first sexual encounter will be recognisable to most: the high tempered with trepidation; the disappointment and feeling of having been used followed by the surge of euphoria when contact is re-established. The story is compelling, but Doughty makes sure that we're enthralled by teasing us with tantalising glimpses of future events: “I do find out what your wife looks like eventually ...”; “in 18 months' time, I would discover that his blood group was O Positive.”

Her writing is piercing and potent, overpowering emotions captured in sharp, pithy phrases. For all the tachy- cardia-inducing detail of the plot, Doughty's view is broad, steeping the story in authenticity. She provides convincing examples of the effects of trauma, such as the atmosphere after a vitriolic outburst at a middle-class dinner party: “ugly and baffled silence ... thick in the yellow room”; and describes the larger world, such as a stranger's personal drama on the street. The court scene is one of the best I've ever read, the suspense and tension building to a taut peak.

A major theme is how we build up illusions about people we don't know, and fall for our ideal rather than the individual. Others include the way female victims are treated by the criminal law system, the sly manipulation of juries, and the way a series of facts can be arranged and interpreted in a variety of ways, all telling different narratives. Riveting.

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At first she believes she can keep the relationship separate from the rest of her life, but she can’t control what happens next. All of her careful plans spiral into greater deceit and, eventually, a life-changing act of violence.

Apple Tree Yard is both a psychological thriller and an insightful examination of the values we all live by and the choices we make, from an acclaimed writer at the height of her powers.

‘There can’t be a woman alive who hasn’t once realised, in a moment of panic, that she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man. Louise Doughty, more sure-footed with each novel, leads her unnerved reader into dark territory. A compelling and bravely-written book.’ Hilary Mantel

Bulgaria, Brazil, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Taiwan and Turkey.

An unabridged audio book version, read by Juliet Stevenson, is out now from Faber & Faber and was an Audible No 1 bestseller.

TV rights were sold to Kudos Productions by Rebecca Watson at Valerie Hoskins Associates Ltd on behalf of Antony Harwood Ltd.  A four-part adaptation starring Emily Watson as Yvonne Carmichael was broadcast on BBC1 January 2017, at 9pm on Sundays.  It was hailed as both one of the best and most controversial dramas of recent years, with mass coverage across the press and consolidated viewing figures of 7million. The TV tie in edition has, so far, reached no 2 in the Sunday Times Bestseller List and no 1 in the Amazon Kindle charts.

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‘Doughty writes with consummate pacing and psychological acuity, bringing fresh force to a common regret of adulterous lovers’   The New Yorker

‘ At the start of Louise Doughty’s taut and psychologically persuasive novel we find [Yvonne] taking the witness stand at the Old Bailey, accused of complicity in a violent crime and about to be exposed in a highly damaging and compromising lie…this is a novel that explores the ease with which we can stray off our safe, familiar paths and become addicted to the stories we tell about ourselves. A disquieting, perceptive and gripping read .’  Daily Mail

‘ Doughty’s achievement is to imagine a horribly mundane tragedy – the kind that could happen to anyone, but a tragedy nonetheless… it gives nothing away to state that the comprehensiveness of [Yvonne’s] public disgrace is harrowingly well-realised… the trial itself is a masterful piece of evasion and selective disclosure… a compelling cautionary tale of what happens when fantasy begins to occlude real life. ‘The trouble with stories is, they are addictive,’ Doughty states.  In this case, she may never have written a truer word .’  The Guardian

‘ The adult ambiguities Doughty unravels in smooth, sinuous prose lead to two shocking yet credible final revelations. Brooding, emotionally complex and powerful .’ Kirkus Review

‘ Apple Tree Yard is very, very good …’ Chicago Herald Tribune.

‘ Louise Doughty has written a gripping thriller that calls our own thoughts on morality into question and is impossible to put down. Intelligent and captivating, Apple Tree Yard makes you realise how one bad decision can change the course of your life forever .’ Stylist Magazine, Top Ten Must-Reads for June

‘ Doughty controls the progress of this narrative beautifully, parsing out information with tantalising hints at what is to come… Apple Tree Yard is a chilling novel, in part because of the unsparing light it shines on our ability to deceive ourselves.  Doughty has a particular gift for unsettling stories, for making us ask difficult questions of ourselves, and this is her strongest book yet.  It’s not a comfortable read, but it is entirely compelling.’  The Observer

An affair with an anonymous stranger threatens a London geneticist’s marriage and career in Louise Doughty’s spellbinding Apple Tree Yard, in which a private conflict between security and desire has shocking political consequences.  Vogue.com

‘ Doughty is a brilliant storyteller who knows how to build the suspense to a breaking point.’  The Times

‘ If a prologue to a novel is to whet the reader’s appetite, Louise Doughty provides irresistible temptation with the opening to Apple Tree Yard… Recollection, interspersed with the growing tension as the trial plays out in the Old Bailey, provides a perfectly dovetailed structure. But within the thriller framework lies a wealth of acutely observed detail, a dissection of social attitudes and an examination of lust, trust, predatory sex, risky behaviour and responsibility…As deftly as her lover lured Yvonne into a high-risk relationship, Doughty has skilfully led the reader to cast aside misgivings and trust her confident lead. That the result is unsettling is evidence that there is considerably more to Apple Tree Yard than thrilling narrative alone .’  Herald Scotland

Doughty, like Zoë Heller, Rachel Cusk and Tessa Hadley, drops sharp, shiver-inducing insights, like winter raindrops, on every page… The story is compelling, but Doughty makes sure that we’re enthralled by teasing us with tantalising glimpses of future events.  Her writing is piercing and potent, overpowering emotions captured in sharp, pithy phrases. For all the tachycardia-inducing detail of the plot, Doughty’s view is broad, steeping the story in authenticity. She provides convincing examples of the effects of trauma, such as the atmosphere after a vitriolic outburst at a middle-class dinner party: “ugly and baffled silence … thick in the yellow room”; and describes the larger world, such as a stranger’s personal drama on the street. The court scene is one of the best I’ve ever read, the suspense and tension building to a taut peak.  A major theme is how we build up illusions about people we don’t know, and fall for our ideal rather than the individual. Others include the way female victims are treated by the criminal law system, the sly manipulation of juries, and the way a series of facts can be arranged and interpreted in a variety of ways, all telling different narratives. Riveting.  The Independent

Nobody who reads Apple Tree Yard is likely to complain about feeling short-changed … Here the sharp domestic details are powerfully combined with (among other things) a dark crime thriller, a gripping courtroom drama and an unforced meditation on the pleasures and dangers of self-deception … Superbly teasing . Readers Digest

Certainly not typical thriller territory, but all the more appealing and unexpected for it. I loved this slow burner of a story which ignites into a nail-biting finale … Full of sharp, yet almost throwaway observations about women and careers, the differences between men and women, about love and long-term relationships, this book was nothing like what I expected. This was a fascinating read, reminiscent of Nicci French in top form, yet with an added twinge of melancholy. crimefictionlover.com

Tense, unnerving and gripping . Woman and Home

[It’s] fascinating to see a brilliant woman destroy her life with a few impulsive decisions. In Doughty’s hands, Yvonne’s actions are both shocking and weirdly understandable .’ Entertainment Weekly (US)

A masterful writer… Doughty also perfectly captures the quiet details of domestic life, the erotic charge of a high-stakes affair, the crackling drama of a courtroom. She dispatches the notion that we are masters of our own fate, chillingly illustrating how quickly we can derail our own lives .  Bookpage Review (US)

Doughty’s seventh novel is a unique hybrid—a riveting courtroom drama, an engaging exploration of ideas, and a harrowing exposé of human nature, or, as Yvonne puts it, “the stories we tell in order to make sense of ourselves, to ourselves.” The book is a triumph. Every page bristles with menace. Macleans (Canada)

Read an interview with Louise Doughty on the Faber & Faber website here .

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An intelligent, erotically charged thriller with deep moral implications.

Yvonne Carmichael, a renowned geneticist, public authority, and happily married mother of two, sits in the witness box. The charge is murder. Across the courtroom, not meeting her eye, sits her alleged accomplice. He wears the beautiful pin-striped suit he wore on their first meeting in the Houses of Parliament, when he put his hand on her elbow and guided her to a deserted chapel, where she began to undress. As the barrister’s voice grows low and sinuous, Yvonne realizes she’s lost herself and the life she’d built so carefully to a man who never existed at all.

After their first liaison, Yvonne’s lover tells her very little about himself, but she comes to suspect his secrecy has an explanation connected with the British government. So thrilled and absorbed is she in her newfound sexual power that she fails to notice the real danger about to blindside her from a seemingly innocuous angle. Then, reeling from an act of violence, Yvonne discovers that her desire for justice and revenge has already been compromised. Everything hinges on one night in a dark little alley called Apple Tree Yard.

Suspenseful, erotically charged and masterfully paced, Louise Doughty’s APPLE TREE YARD is an intelligent psychological thriller about desire and its consequences by a writer of phenomenal gifts.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

• Publication Date: January 13, 2015
• Genres: Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador
• ISBN-10: 1250062039
• ISBN-13: 9781250062031

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