Apple Tree Yard

"It opens in the Old Bailey with Dr Yvonne Carmichael—a highly respected geneticist, a respectable married woman who’s published a lot of academic papers, and who advises the government on scientific policy—in the dock, accused of something dreadful. We don’t know what and we don’t know why. It’s a first-person narrative, so we are inside her head. In this opening scene, she starts off feeling quite sure of herself and then there’s this building sense of panic that something is about to be revealed by the prosecution that will bring everything tumbling down and that her life will be completely and irrevocably changed. That’s the opening and then the whole book goes back through what’s happened to bring her to this point, starting with her illicit encounter with a complete stranger in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons. That act, completely out of character, kickstarts the torrid affair that will bring her life tumbling down. At first, it’s a story of sexual obsession, but then something happens to her in her own life. She gets assaulted. And she uses this stranger, with whom she is having this affair, whom she knows absolutely nothing about, but onto whom she projects all her own fantasies, to enact her retribution, and it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. “I always love a dislikeable main character and he is despicable right from the word go.” The reason I chose this book is because it works on so many levels. It’s so layered. On one level, there’s this story of sexual obsession and revenge and all those big themes. On another level, you’ve got the scientist who’s forced to confront the irrationality of her own responses and actions. Another level is about the lies that we all tell and that she tells. At one point, she actually says that the trouble with stories is that they’re addictive. She’s telling stories all the time, to her husband, to her lover and, in the end, to herself and—more importantly—to the reader. But we only really realize that very, very gradually because, as a scientist, she’s so forensic in her descriptions and we believe in her authority and accept what she tells us. It’s only right towards the end that we start to realize that she might have been lying, not only to herself, but to us. That’s hugely wrong-footing. As a reader it’s deeply unsettling. And I believe psychological thrillers always, at heart, need to be unsettling, so the book works on all those levels I’ve mentioned. At its core is this idea of the unreliable narrator. It’s a first-person account. We’re in her head and we have to take all our cues from her, but we gradually question whether we can completely trust her."