Apple Tree Yard: From the writer of BBC smash hit drama 'Crossfire'

Product Information

The first person narrative, be it imaginary letters or just stream of consciousness, was SO tiresome. Perhaps the format (audiobook) made this more apparent. Even the lovely voice of Juliet Stevenson couldn’t make Yvonne’s thought processes seem any more than whining, delusional, self-obsessed ramblings. Yvonne whatever-her-name-was (I’ve forgotten already and will have forgotten the whole book by the weekend) could rival Tess Durbeyfield in the victim stakes. I am just not convinced that a highly respected, logical, scientific high achiever could be as compliant, passive and irritatingly dense as Yvonne is. The writer comes from Melton Mowbray, but surely the 21st century has arrived even in the home of pork pies and Stilton cheese? I don’t think this sort of woman has all the angst about her competence that Yvonne does. All the stuff about suicide and bipolar and even the spouse affair seemed wholly irrelevant, not adding up to anything, certainly not any sort of explanation. The book was flagged as a "psychological thriller," I think, but the psychology is very dubious. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. The story plays on the tag line of how ‘fear can make animals of us all’. Dr Carmichael’s opening words, as the tale opened with her being transported to court with a jolt in a prison van, were: “Reallly, we are all just animals. You know how I know that? Fear, fear for your life… ” When you are a rational human being, with free will and agency, is there any such thing as a point of no return?"

Another structural issue was the prologue, which adds little to the book other than giving away something which would otherwise be a source of suspense and tension. The ending is also dragged out - almost everything is resolved, so it's obvious that there is going to be one final reveal, and there is really only one thing that it could be.

Rate And Review

A surprisingly original and disturbing novel about a woman who embarks on an affair with disastrous consequences. Surprising, considering the description makes it sound like an average nail-biter when in fact it turns out to be much more. From the very beginning we are told that the main character is on trial as a direct result of her affair. Gradually, the events leading up to the trial are revealed. But at least we got his name at last, when she dropped him at a station. He said they shouldn’t see each other for a while, and took her secret infidelity phone. She called out, feebly, “Mark” as he went.

They bump into each other again at another café and the affair takes off. He says he is a civil servant, but still we don’t know his name or what he really does. Adding to her thrills, and given his expert knowledge of CCTV among other things, Dr Carmichael soon surmises he is a ‘spook’. She’s feeling not only mysterious, but naughty, and a bit young again, and she loves it. Who wouldn’t? Rape on television is often an unthinking plot device, used to destroy women or spur avenging males. Here, mercifully, Yvonne is not diminished; damaged but not destroyed. As the story gets darker, turning through consequences and revelations (rather than twists), it’s her power, more than her lover’s, that comes under close examination. She can influence others and deceive herself. Director Jessica Hobbs rations out plot details in a model of fleet visual storytelling and elliptical ambiguity. In her shots, the details of London tend to dissolve into soft focus, all watery blues and burning orange, as though the narrative winds between a daydream and panic of wakefulness. Award-winning writer Hilary Mantel comments hauntingly about this story: ‘There cannot be a woman alive who hasn’t once realised, in a moment of panic, that she is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man.’ Brilliantly done…clever, intriguing, utterly compelling, the story of how a normal, intelligent and pretty average woman gets caught up in infidelity and brutality, almost by accident. Highly recommended.DNA made me and DNA undid me." So confesses the protagonist of Louise Doughty's 2013 novel Apple Tree Yard, a middle-aged scientist and mother, Yvonne Carmichael, now standing trial for a grisly murder. The the main protagonist was a successful scientist, an intelligent woman. She threw her intelligence aside, feeling she deserved her little fling because of how competent she'd been when her family were growing. If you want to have a tawdry fling, fine. Have it. Don't delude yourself that he is 'your love' because he isn't. Don't hold on to the delusion even after you have heard all the evidence to the contrary. It makes you unbelievable as a scientist and a person. Perhaps the point of the novel was to show how we delude ourselves, but frankly, the woman irritated me.