One of the best books I read in 2014 was The Song for Issy Bradley, Carys Bray’s Costa winning début novel.  My expectations, therefore, were a tad on the high side when I picked up her latest (and second) novel The Museum of You. And while it doesn’t deliver the same emotional punch as her first novel, The Museum of You is still a very smart, very compassionate and very well written novel.

12-year-old Clover Quinn has always struggled to get any information from her father, or her father’s friends or the delightful and hard of hearing next door neighbour about her mother, Rebecca, who died when Clover was only six weeks old.  Now on summer holidays she has decided to search through her mother’s belongings, shoved away in the spare bedroom, with the intent of creating a museum display that will start to fill in some of the gaps as to the sort of person her mother was.  As the novel alternates between Clover’s archaeological dive into her mother’s past and flashbacks to her parent’s (Bec and Darren) first meeting and early relationship a picture emerges that’s difficult and tragic and yet ultimately hopeful.

Where this novel wins – aside from Bray’s ability to write sympathetic characters that you enjoy spending time with – is how she sensitively handles the issues of mental illness and postpartum depression.  There is darkness to the novel and just like she did with The Song for Issy Bradley, Bray never cuts away from the unfolding tragedy to comfort the reader.  But she doesn’t dwell either.  The truth about what happened to Clover’s mother is something we learn gradually.  As a consequence when the truth does emerge into light it does so with a great deal of tenderness and compassion.  Her tragic death is not sensationalised.  Fingers are not pointed and blame is not apportioned.  That doesn’t mean, though, that characters, especially Darren, don’t feel a great deal of culpability for what transpired with Rebecca.  The great strength of the novel is Darren’s journey to accept his innocence through the eyes of his daughter.

This could have been a sentimental and mawkish book, but Bray’s dry sense of humour and passion for life and people sings through. I especially loved the octogenarian next door neighbour Margaret who generates a great deal of comedy in the novel, but also plays a pivotal role in how this small neighborhood of characters deal with the tragedy that, for so long, has defined them – whether directly or indirectly as in the case of Clover.

I’ve read a good chunk of the Man Booker longlisted novels for this year – reviews forthcoming – and when I compare the quiet power of The Museum of You to the dull, flaccid, uninspired entries that form the bulk of this year’s longlist I can’t help but be annoyed.  But great fiction isn’t only defined by awards recognition and whether The Museum of You picks up nominations from other literary circles is less of a concern than the fact that this is another strong novel from Carys Bray, a writer most certainly worth following.

Helen Dunmore is absolutely correct when she says, in her review for The Guardian that “Bray’s fluid, engaging style and humour mask the novel’s complexity, just as Clover’s cheerful, easy demeanour conceals the depth of her inner life.”  This is a book with layers.  Katy Goodwin-Bates also notes the novel’s subtlety and that while there is a deep sadness at the core of The Museum of You this is not a mawkish or depressing read.  In other words everyone agrees with me!  Or I more precisely I agree with them.