Simon McDonald

After her memoir, Bad Behaviour, the last thing I expected next from Rebecca Starford was the wartime espionage novel The Imitator. And the last thing I predicted after that was her latest, The Visitor, a dread-laden gothic novel with (possible) supernatural trappings. I’m not complaining. In an industry that craves categorisation, it’s a rare and glorious thing to pick up a new book by an author you admire, and not know what to expect.

The Visitor is an exploration of grief and loss, and the guilt of the accumulative choices and miniscule indiscretions made throughout a life. For Laura, her decision to escape outback Queensland for London when she became an adult had inevitable repercussions; her relationship with her parents frayed away almost completely. And now it is too late to make amends, because when the novel opens, she receives a call from Australia that her parents have been found dead in the desert.

Laura, husband Andrew, and 14-year-old daughter Tilly leave Oxfordshire for Queensland in order to sort out affairs, and renovate and sell the house. There’s nothing placating about Laura’s return though, as she eventually discovers the events of the the weeks and days leading up to their deaths, and strange happenings commence within the walls of her family home.

But for all its eeriness and creepiness, The Visitor is very much a novel about family, and the paradoxical bond between blood; a contradiction of durability and fragility. It’s deftly constructed, gradually building in intensity, until its wholly satisfying denouement. An impressive sophomore novel from Starford.