Scissors Paper Stone opens with a car crash and doesn’t let up much from there. Charles, who we first see lying in the road waiting for an ambulance, is a character conspicuous in his absence. Never really there, his actions and personality dominate his wife Anne and, eventually, their daughter Charlotte.
This novel takes a moment of crisis and explores how it can expose great family chasms that everyday life has long buried. While Charlotte is trying to figure out why she can not truly bring herself to fall in love, Anne worries about how her relationship with Charlotte has never achieved the closeness she longs for. Both women have long lived under the shadow of Charles’ actions, but, with him finally silent, they begin to talk about what has gone between them.
The twist that comes at the end of this story is foreshadowed throughout the book, but when it comes it is achingly sad, driving forward the rest of the narrative with a huge sense of hope that, somehow, mother and daughter will forgive each other.
Any Cop?: Scissors Paper Stone is intense and beautiful, it is one of those novels that grabs you from the first page and doesn’t let go until you have experienced every tiny heartbreak and snatched victory. It is a total triumph, flawless and, in the end, uplifting.
Helen Dring
Bookmunch 