A Stranger in the Family by Robert Barnard

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


"[...] what is the connection between a Leeds solicitor's family and a literary-academic family in Glasgow headed by a Jewish refugee?"

I have been recently dealing with heavy stuff at work so here is yet another "leisure read" (almost no thinking required when reading) from Robert Barnard. A Stranger in the Family (2010) promises "A novel of suspense" on the cover, and sort of delivers, particularly in the latter part of the novel. Mr. Barnard again displays a skill unusual for authors of mystery/suspense/crime novels: the endings of his books are usually better than the beginnings. In fact, the beginning of this novel is barely readable and I had to grind my teeth to plough through.

Suppose you are abducted from your birth parents and siblings as a three-year old child and raised by an adoptive family. Suppose you are twenty-two when you learn about the abduction and you finally meet your birth family. This is pure soap-opera territory yet eventually all the trappings of TV-caliber idiocy disappear and the story almost begins to work: the 70-year-old past provides keys to the mystery.

The novel begins with scenes of late August 1939. Children are on a train passing through the Netherlands and set out for the United Kingdom. This is one of the last transports in the Kindertransport, a large-scale rescue effort aiming to save mostly Jewish children from countries that were (or were soon to be) under German rule.

Kit Philipson was born as Peter Novello in a Leeds solicitor's family. At the age of three, during the family's stay in Sicily, he had been abducted, and ended up as an adopted child in Philipson family in Glasgow. His adoptive father, Jürgen, was one of the children rescued in the Kindertransport action in 1939. Now that his adopted parents are dead Kit wants to meet his birth family. Things are not that easy, though. His birth father does not seem to know him. Links to Glasgow gang world and connection with Sicilian Mafia emerge.

The author serves some gang-style silly theatrics late in the novel, but the actual ending is in fact quite far from silly bestseller stuff. Mr. Barnard offers a quiet, serene, and wise ending, which I like a lot and which sort of balances the soap opera and gang aspects of the plot. The "Barnard mystery" will never cease to fascinate me: how come most of his books are poor reads at the beginning and then, as the plot develops, get better and better? I will definitely read a few more Barnards.

Two and a half stars.



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