Sunday, May 17, 2015

Review: ONLY WE KNOW by Karen Perry

The second offering from the Irish writing partnership of Karen Perry (aka Karen Gillece and Paul Perry), Only We Know (Penguin) opens on a riverbank in Kenya’s Masai Mara in 1982, with Sally arriving moments too late to prevent a tragedy that involves her young sons Luke and Nicky and their friend Katie. The story then moves forward to 2013, when Katie is a journalist in Dublin, Luke a successful businessman, and Nicky a recently married musician living in Nairobi. The trio’s belief that their tragic secret is known only to them is revealed to be a fallacy when Katie receives a bizarre and ominous token in the post, and soon their lives are spiralling out of control as this psychological thriller, which offers alternating viewpoints and subjective interpretations of the truth of what really happened on that fateful day, strips back the layers of deceit that has sustained them in the intervening decades. Only We Know builds handsomely on the promise of The Boy That Never Was (2014), plausibly and hauntingly exploring the extent to which guilt, shame and secrecy can shape, define and eventually destroy lives. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.
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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.