Absolution brings together Clare, an ageing South African novelist, and Sam, her biographer, tracing their interweaving stories while bringing South Africa's turbulent history to the fore. As the novel progresses, Patrick Flanery allows us to see brief views of how they are linked through the character of Laura, Clare's absent daughter. He never fully allows us to understand Laura’s story as we see flashes of it through Clare’s internal monologue and Sam’s childhood. He also challenges us to bring our own opinions of her to the fore and ensures that these opinions change as her story adapts and changes, although we’re never sure what’s real, imagined or just plain conjecture. This novel is complex, with the story unfolding at different times and via different perspectives and truths. I often found it confusing and initially it was hard to get into because of the constant change between narrator, timeframe and perspective. However, I also found that this drew me into the book and characters at the same time. The challenging storyline ensures that the reader gets a full picture of the political and historical context of the characters’ stories and actions. I really got into Sam and Clare’s psyche’s to understand further what was driving them and where the main storyline was to lead them. I certainly didn’t learn to love, or even like, the characters but I think this was the point: a way of being able to portray the complexities of South African identity and recent history. I will certainly be on the lookout for future novels from Patrick Flanery as this was a seriously thought provoking debut.

I enjoyed this book and its pace. I did take a little while to get used to the different threads of the story as it is infact four stories about the same events but different view points but once I did I was hooked. Its also great to read something that makes you think and it shows the same event can be perceived in different ways by the person telling the tale. I did not initially feel much sympathy for Clare the main charector but she did grow on me. Laura her daughter was difficult to empathise with but I did care about what happened to the Sam whose past intertwines with Clare and Laura. I found the way in which people live and all the risk and security required both interesting and alarming and the book gave a good insight into a modern day South Africa and how un settled it is. A great book about a troubled world.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Absolution focuses on a series of meetings between elderly writer, Clare Wald, and her recently-appointed biographer, Samuel Leroux. However at the real heart of the novel lies the fate of Laura, Clare's daughter. Missing, presumed dead, Laura was actively involved in the liberation struggle and her life intersected dramatically with Sam's childhood, though we only learn the full significance of this intersection as the novel progresses and the truth about Sam's, Clare's and Laura's inter-connected pasts begins to emerge from a number of over-lapping and conflicting narratives. Even by the end of the book, however, several important questions are left only partially answered and the reader is forced to draw his or her own conclusions. Patrick Flanery paints an arresting picture of contemporary South Africa as a society riven by violent crime in which the white middle class have barricaded themselves within fortress-like compounds whose every room is equipped with a panic button. It's not a comfortable read and the ending is in many ways unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, this is a compelling, challenging and disturbing account of the corrosive effect the apartheid regime exercised, and still continues to exercise, on both South Africa's black and white communities.

An aging novelist is interviewed by a young man - however as the story goes on we find their tales are interlinked, but do they know, and who is telling the truth? The pace of the book fluctuates, there were some real 'oh' moments when a new fact was thrown into the mix, and other times I wished the editor had been a bit more free with their pen. This book shows some real promise; the characters were interesting, although not necessarily likeable, and the backdrop of South Africa's changing political scene raised it above the usual 'dig up the dirty past' story. I still feel slightly confused as to what went on as there is no resolution at the end of the tale, but then I think that is the point (I think!).

I didn’t find this an easy book to get into at all. Having said that, the more I read the more I wanted to find out what happened to the main characters and how they all linked together, which it became apparent they did as the book progressed. At times, I found all the different threads rather confusing. The two main characters are, South African Clare, an aging author unwillingly telling her tale to Sam, her biographer. As the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that Clare is not quite as unwilling as she would like us to believe. She has her own motive for asking for Sam in the first place. A central theme of the book is the disappearance of Clare’s daughter, Laura, who was aligned to hard line political groups involved in the liberation struggle. Her mother is of the opinion she is dead. Laura’s past also links to Sam even more than to her mother. We never fully find out Laura’s fate, and that in itself leaves the ending with a big question mark. Set in a changing South Africa, the book gives an insight into the country’s history and the problems it still faces.