A dead body found in the Thames is the starting point for this thoughtful and perceptive novel about identity, community, dislocation, immigration and the idea of home and belonging. The many strands of the novel are cleverly interwoven to provide a complex and panoramic portrait of contemporary society in London and the storyline, although fragmented, is compelling enough to engage the reader’s attention throughout. Having said that, I didn't find anything new here. Any London novel is duty bound to represent the many groups and ethnicities that inhabit it, and this Grant dutifully does. And Brexit can’t (ever?) be avoided. I certainly enjoyed the book and wanted to keep turning the pages, but overall was a little underwhelmed by it.

My thanks to Little Brown Book Group U.K./Virago for an eARC via NetGalley of Linda Grant’s ‘A Stranger City’ in exchange for an honest review.

The city of the title is London. Grant brings together a diverse group of people who initially meet in response to the discovery of an unidentified woman’s body in the Thames. Her situation underlines how easy it is for someone to become invisible if they are not part of a community.

The main characters are D.S. Peter Dutton, who finds himself obsessed with identifying the drowned woman; Alan McBride, a documentary film-maker who at the instigation of Dutton creates a documentary about the woman, and Chrissie, an Irish nurse who was herself briefly a missing person. In addition, there are their partners and various others whose lives intersect theirs.

The Referendum of June 2016 is referenced and the growing hostility in some towards immigrants. It’s a frightening scenario that while I have not experienced it personally certainly have seen in the media, both conventional and social. She creates an unsettling picture of a country (or rather a portion of its people) rejecting cultural diversity.

I had very much enjoyed Grant’s ‘The Dark Circle’, which highlighted the foundation of the NHS. Here again she has incorporated social issues through the interlinked lives of her characters and produced a very readable novel.

Her work fits well with that of Amanda Craig, who has written a number of novels exploring London through its inhabitants, and John Lancaster’s ‘Capital’.

I found this a very engaging read that I would expect to be very popular with book groups given its scope for discussion.

Excellent, multi-voiced symphony of a novel about the effect of Brexit (thankfully it's only mentioned once) on a linked group of Londoners. I love the way the characters' lives impact on each other and the celebration of individual stories from a variety of cultures. LInda Grant has written another amazing book. I hope the judges of literary prizes agree.

February 2016 and an unknown woman is buried in a common grave. Few are there, the investigating policeman, Pete, is late. Film maker Alan is filming. He will go on to produce a documentary on how in a major capital - London - in the 21st century a seemingly “respectable” woman can be drowned and nobody can or will identify her. He will compare her to Chrissie – who also “disappeared” on the same night, with a last sighting of both on the same bridge about the same time. Chrissie, a younger Irish nurse, will return after two days and rebuild her life. The novel will follow the investigation into both the two women and the deeper reality of that night by Alan and Pete.
From these three main protagonists Grant will build an ever increasing ring of other characters. They will be Londoners born or Londoners by choice but with links spreading across the world and into many other cultures. The novel will unravel the complexities of all their individual lives, and their place in the city. A city that of course has a deep, historic, complex and multi cultural core, a city that is still evolving.
The date of this story – 2016 - is not coincidental, all prospective readers will have heard of “Brexit” and stories of what is happening in response to the vote and the predictions of what will follow at both a personal and political level. So the other solid background to Grant’s story will therefore be perceptions, reactions and fears around this process of this evolving political situation, as the story is projected through the current into a possible future.
Grant has always been a perceptive writer on people – people in their families and their social place. Her detail and insistence on pinning the minutiae of good, bad and awkward means that her novels have often left me with a sense of recognition but coupled with a quiet unease. This novel is not different. The focus on her insistence of the damage being caused by the Brexit decision itself means that this is not an easy read. Is her perspective true? Exaggerated? And is life really that bad for Londoners? Where does reality stop and her projections of the future start? Do we need to take this warning seriously?
But one deep aspect of the tale is how two different women, of different ages and different backgrounds can come to London and live for better or worse. Furthermore, looking at how in 21st century Britain a woman can live and die unidentified and unclaimed explores our wider care and respect for other people around us in our communities. That is not just a London issue. Book groups will have a lot to mull over.

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

When I came across this book, it looked really interesting and I am glad I requested to read it, I thought it was a unique and interesting storyline. I found the characters very interesting and they really drove the story, this would be a good television series. But as soon as I hit the second half of the book, the writing seemed to have lost its focus and I felt a bit confused as to where the story was heading, a shame really as this book has a lot of promise.

Despite the alarmist tone of the narrative, the over exaggerated racial tensions and annoying imagery reminding me of Nazis and the Holocaust, I truly enjoyed this novel. I loved the colorful, quirky palette of character, each so different, each character with its own stories, origins, life struggles yet they all come together to paint a vibrant image of London. In my view the author manages to brilliantly evoke the spirit of London; having at its core the multi-cultural society formed by people. Important themes are being explored like: community; isolation; loneliness; individuality; privacy in a social media era etc.
For me, the message/conclusion of this book is: we are all different, with our different origins, our different stories, yet we all come together to form something that is way bigger than we are!

3.5 stars.
I'm still not to sure what to make of this book. I am also not sure if it is a me thing or a book itself thing. I prefer my reads to flow nicely and the connections and tangents to be structured well. For me sadly, I found this book a little too much all over the place and consequently, that made it a harder read than I am used to.
We start with the discovery of the body of an unknown woman as the center of what then becomes a spiral outwards encapsulating a filmmaker and a policeman who are combining to make a documentary. This documentary then takes the spiral wider into London and touches on isolation, diversity, population, politics and a whole host of other interconnected things.
There's a lot of wonderfully lyrical prose contained within the book but even the joy of reading that didn't connect me enough with the overall story/stories being told and I felt a bit detached for the majority. I do need to connect in some way either to the characters or the story to make a book a good read. Maybe this is another tick in the not you/me box. Maybe it's not the right time for me to have read it. Jury is definitely still out. Maybe some of the poignant points being made went over my head / got lost in the noise.
All in all, I did take some things from my read so it wasn't all wasted. There must have been a little something that compelled me to carry on reading rather than giving up, which I do admit to thinking about during the first quarter. Maybe I'll put it on my "try again in the future" list and have another go sometime. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I'd like to thank the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in return for a honest and inbiased review.
I was really looking forward to reading this set in my city in the world, but if I'm being honest it never really grabbed me from the start and although I finished it, I was more than a little non plussed by it.

This was a very interesting read, there are parts of it and characters in it that I keep thinking about. I’ve spoken about this book with family members and friends as it was just so readable. The fact that it involves recent events made it relatable and relevant. The ties back to the past of characters and their families were fascinating and I wanted to learn more about some of these. Not really an optimistic book but definitely realistic - want to know about the elephant though!

A Stranger City is a story that focuses on a documentary about a recovery of a woman's body from the Thames. She's not recognisable even after months. Then, the plot goes wider including the lives of the detective who's responsible, the people related to the film making, a testimony and more.
Basically what Grant does in this book is to express her views and show us a future (in a context when Brexit happened) that doesn't have a lot of cultural diversity. She looks at identity and how fragile it is, and how quickly it may change.
I really enjoyed this book. It was very rich, thought provoking and interesting to read about all these different characters.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for granting a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

A womans body is found in the chains of HMS Belfast and no one comes forward to identify her. Pete, the policeman dealing with this, his last case before retirement becomes a bit obsessed by the unknown woman whilst helping his wife through cancer treatmentand Alan, a documentary maker who works with Pete to bring the case to piblic attention is trying to persuade his reluctant wife, Francesa that they should buy a two up two down near the railway line in an unfashionable post code (as this is all they can afford). These two couples and an array of locals who they come into contact with form the basis for this meandering, often seemingly unconnected "story". I quite enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it. Perhaps it was my mood (feeling ill at the time) but I found some of the chapter beginnings quite jarring. They often started with "she thought" or "he did" and it would be a least a page or two before it was revealed which character was being referred to and I had to delve back to remeber theirbackstory and how they were connected, sometimes it was even a new family who were being introduced.

The book is set in the London of "now" or just in the future in a slightly dystopian time when any one without proper papers is held and deported and the weather patterns are askew.

A Stranger City is a sinuous tale centring on a documentary about the recovery of a female body from The Thames, identity still unknown six months later. The story expands, covering the lives of the detective in charge of the discovery, the film-maker and his wife, her immigrant grandparents, a nurse who happened to be on the bridge at the time the Jane Doe jumped, and her contacts and much more.
There is a touch of where am I? where was I now? but in the context of this work, set against the Brexit backdrop, which explores the tenuous nature of identity and the speed with which it can evaporate, the mighty cast of colourful and confusing characters and their stories is tolerable.
Linda Grant expresses her views through her characters resolutely and with passion, adding life to her characters and making it easier to envisage a sanitised future lacking much cultural diversity.
With thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK Virago

This was not at all the sort of book I was expecting. There was a refreshing absence of the cliched characters who usually inhabit "London Novels", and instead a focus on the huge diversity of people who live in London, and who have always gone there. The underlying story of the anonymous body found in the river links the characters in a believable way, without becoming too intrusive. Linda Grant's slightly detached writing style was perfect for this book, conveying the detached nature of London itself. Even the Brexit thread seemed no more than another chapter in the long history of the capital.

I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as The Dark Circle. It took me a while to get into as I couldn't remember who was who and their tenuous link to the dead woman. But as I read on I did begin to warm to the characters, although I found the London portrayed quite different from the London I know. Well-written as ever, but not her best novel, I'm afraid.

A Stranger City is an ambitious novel that seeks to draw parallels between recent history and Brexit Britain, using the stories of various members of northeast London’s diverse community to illustrate the situation.

The frame on which the novel hangs is the discovery of an unidentified young female body in the River Thames. The discovery is investigated by a policeman and featured in a documentary by a filmmaker. We then broaden out and meet their families and some of the wider community. We find a community that is diverse even within the United Kingdom, including Scots, Irish and migrants from elsewhere in England. Then we find migrants from the Commonwealth and semi-recent conflict zones - Iran after the fall of the Shah. And then there are the more recent migrants from within the EU. All are seen to be integral to the London we see today.

Contrast this with an England that seems to be retreating into itself, harking after the glory days of an Empire, capital punishment and boiled cabbage. Those who are smart enough, able enough, want to move away from this increasingly hostile and ignorant society. Which is ironic, since so many of them came to London precisely to enjoy a broader, global perspective and experience culture and sophistication.

The story of the dead woman remains in the background. For a while it is (intentionally) confused by a parallel story of a missing social media star - a vacuous young woman who is famous only for being famous. And while the dead woman mystery is ultimately resolved, it is not satisfying. The main point is that it is possible for someone to go missing and not be missed, not be reported in this unfeeling society. Might it have been different if she had been English?

A Stranger City is successful in depicting a multicultural society; it makes interesting political points showing the contradiction between the current insularity and the aspirations of individual members of that society. There is some wonderful depiction of characters. But it doesn’t quite hang together as a story. It is too difficult to hold so many characters in the mind all at once, so each time a character re-appears, he or she has to be re-learned. Their inter-relationships are too opaque and the narrative drive is just not there. Which is a pity, because the descriptive writing is fabulous.

I found A Stranger City well written but ultimately unsatisfying.

It’s an oddly-structured, fractured book. The central plot, such as it is, revolves around the discovery of a body of an unidentified woman whom no-one has reported missing, and a woman who is reported missing with a lot of social media fuss at the same time, but is discovered to be fine a couple of days later. A policeman and a filmmaker collaborate to produce a documentary about the missing woman and this device is used as a vehicle for thoughts about identity and isolation in London. In fact, the book is largely taken up with portraits of the lives of incidental characters showing the diversity of London’s population, plus reflections on the difficulty of buying property in London, the vacuousness of hip PR people in London, the gentrification and trendifying of areas of London and so on. In other words, it’s a novel about London – hence the title.

It’s well enough done. Linda Grant is a good writer and her portraits are pretty well painted, although her characters do have a tendency to make speeches rather than sound spontaneous. The thing is, it all felt very familiar and I didn’t get anything very new from it. For me, the London thing has been done to death (and I live in London), Ali Smith, Jonathan Coe and others have written novels about Britain and Brexit and I just got bored with A Stranger City. I didn’t find the characters or what was being said interesting enough to keep going and I’m afraid I gave up about half way through.

This certainly isn’t a bad book; it’s just that for me it says nothing new, in spite of saying it very elegantly. Others may like this more than I did, but it wasn’t for me.

(My thanks to Virago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

This is an enjoyable and convoluted tale of friendships, encounters, chance meetings and loneliness in the largest city in the UK. At the heart of the story is a suicide which touches the lives of many people, even though no one seems to know who the woman was and why she might have taken her own life.
One of the numerous "lessons" is that friendships can be formed between the most unlikely couples and that differences can lead to bonding.
This is an interesting book, with great characters, and well worth a read.

This multi-stranded, thickly woven narrative recalls the intricate Persian carpets that are featured in one of the storylines.
London is portrayed in all its vari-faceted diversity – a kaleidoscope of race and class and culture, as the lives of the people we meet overlap or interconnect in one way or another.
I have to say I enjoyed the first half of the novel more than the second, which seemed to stray off-course with too many diversions and a rather jarring conclusion. However, the writing is always a joy to read with evocative and memorable imagery:

'Autumn and winter are the natural condition of England. London is a city made for rain and trafficclogged roads, umbrellas at the bus stop shaken out on the tube platform, a metropolis of scarves and parkas and boots and bottlegreen leather gloves lined with cashmere which Francesca buys every year, the complete pair never surviving until the spring; lost, impaled by a passer-by on a railing, screaming for its hand.’

I read and enjoyed Linda Grant’s last novel “The Dark Circle” back in 2o16. It was set largely in a TB sanatorium in a post-war Britain very much on the cusp of a modern age as the richly drawn characters awaited developments which would cure them and allow them back into the society their illness had removed them from.

The author’s latest places us into contemporary London where change is also anticipated and it is not good news at the city awaits the effects of Brexit. It is a disorientating time in the city for the characters and becomes increasingly so as deportation trains begin to rattle through the night, “illegals” are held in prison ships and one sequence set in a dis-located part of London feels like Alice down the rabbit hole.

This shifting uncertain London shimmers in the background of a plot with a mystery story at its heart. A suicide off London Bridge by an unidentified woman occurs on the same evening a documentary maker witnesses conflict between a man and an Irish woman on a train. This woman, a nurse, also disappears but the power of social media ensures she is identified and cannot stay missing for too long. The contrast between the two in the same location leads to the film-maker to produce a television programme in an attempt to uncover the dead woman’s identity. And the people caught up in this story are the main protagonists of the novel.

As in the last publication characterisation is here a strong point, although the shifts of focus means that the reader is kept on their toes. Nothing feels totally secure in Grant’s London as the novel shifts, undulates and unsettles throughout. The real and the fictional blur from a character caught up in a terrorist incident on a London bridge to a nation where the tiniest error on paperwork can lead to expulsion from a country keen to rid itself of those it feels no longer belongs. Concealing oneself in an attempt to fit in and disguise are themes developed within the novel.
It is very well written and feels more complex than “The Dark Circle” but is every bit as readable. There is a freshness in the language which makes it feel it is produced by a writer with a definite finger on the pulse. It is another solidly impressive, intelligent work from this author whose reputation continues to grow.

London becomes a metaphor here for the changing UK. It begins with the discovery of an unknown woman, drowned in the Thames, her story intersects with others, and with others again as a wide range of characters of different backgrounds, ethnicities and sexuality are brought together in the capital.
The narrative feels quite breathless as Grant uses short sentences and free indirect speech to inhabit the thoughts of each of these characters. Towards the end of the novel she gives us a dystopian vision of London and the UK as a place where foreigners are rounded up and kept in prison ships off the coast.
I was interested in the ideas and enjoyed parts of this novel, but overall it isn’t one of her best in my opinion.