Several loosely overlapping characters and stories here, forming an overall celebration of the multi-cultural city of London and the opportunities it gives people to create new lives for themselves. The characters are brought together initially by the mystery surrounding an unidentified woman drowned in the Thames but, as is the way of city living, coincidences keep them bumping into each other.

The strength of the book, for me, is its people, what they bring to London and what they get out of it. I have always enjoyed Linda Grant’s preoccupation with personal presentation and there is plenty of that here (I am thinking particularly of Marco and his reinventions of himself as his story unfolds). There is a strong visual aspect to the whole book.

I have long been a fan of Linda Grant’s writing. A couple of examples that struck me:

‘The train felt itself along the thread of the rails back to London. The sun was low and ruddy. The city had risen, shifted, shrugged, become displaced in some way she didn’t understand. Was it time to move on? Not just yet, there was a little length left on the spool.’

‘The whole of her family was now on its mettle. Their instinct for self-preservation had risen up like iron filings. They were alert and starting to make plans.’

Xenophobia is an undercurrent throughout, bubbling up to the surface in aggressive incidents, and at times the novel verges on a dystopian vision of post-Brexit Britain. I get the feeling, though, that I am being shown that London has always absorbed whoever came its way and would continue to do so.

A Stranger City is a novel about London, about the people there and how they find it a home or otherwise. It starts with a dead body found on the Thames, unidentifiable. The body affects only a few people, but in different ways, and from there the narrative weaves around their lives, as London's recent past unfurls and then moves into the near future.

A little disorientating at first (in some ways like the experience of moving to London), the novel falls into a rhythm, highlighting coincidence and connection, and how in such a big, busy, diverse city, anyone's lives can intersect. In this way, it follows on from a lot of other London novels, featuring a range of characters who come together in different ways and emphasising how important the city is in this. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of focus on Brexit and xenophobia resulting from it, as well as the idea of London as a place you might be born in, come to, or leave. It is nuanced, but firmly cementing the city as a place for anyone, where anyone might meet.

This is another London novel, another Brexit novel even, but also a character-focused narrative that is more about people than geography. London is less visceral than in some books, the catalyst for relationships rather than a player itself, and this will suit readers who are interested in a novel that doesn't delve into London itself but looks at people, home, and coincidence.

London is inhabited by a multi-cultural, diverse society; a society that flaunts its multi-racial, multi-ethnic status; perhaps even its willingness to embrace diversity, difference. It is a Society that values success, entrepreneurial enterprise and its cultural status whilst able to glance over the heads of the disenfranchised, frowning on the lives of those who don’t quite make it. Linda Grant has based her novel A Stranger City in this London. An apt title because her London is peopled with strangers; people that bump up against other strangers, come together and move on to meet with other strangers; strangers from different backgrounds, different status, different aspirations, different communities which are sometimes comprised of a hotchpotch of these varying strands of our society and sometimes a closed, rigid community relating, to race, class, religion or postcode.

At the centre of the plot is the body of a woman who jumped off of London Bridge into the Thames. Despite police and media appeals nobody comes forward to claim her, she is identified as DB27 – Dead body No. 27. The policeman investigating this ‘missing person’ is obsessed with her because she is not a street person, she is well-dressed but there is nothing to identify her. He meets a film maker who makes a documentary about the body and still no one comes forward to identify her. The CCTV image of her shows another female figure – this is Chrissie, an Irish nurse – who has her own tale to tell.

Each character within the text is beautifully drawn, and each comes from a different community, and sometimes no community, but they intersect, relate and move on. Within this fluid assembly of personalities and situations, a story emerges, perhaps to be more accurate, a series of stories that overlap and distort: but I found the viewpoint quite dystopian, uncomfortable. For me London is busy (of course), diverse – certainly; and there are many different kinds of communities, but amongst all this there are many who strive to include those on the margins of society and to strengthen the sense of community – a more positive view. What struck me most was the imagery Ms Grant has evoked following the referendum on the EU which revealed a London, or society, that was hysterically pulling up the drawbridge but not before any ‘foreigners’ were evicted with hundreds of trains packed with the ‘others’.

Despite the somewhat lyrical language which soothed me somewhat from this negative imagery, I did find the text ‘strange’. In what way? I could not say: I feel I am missing something, I just don’t understand what. Would I recommend it? Again, not sure, but it is intriguing and thought provoking. A telling point for me is whether I would re-read it. Definitely not but that is not to say it is not worth reading.

Thank you to the author, publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.