FISH, BLOOD AND BONE

Equal parts gothic romance, SF thriller, adventure narrative, and feminist bildungsroman, this second novel from journalist and travel writer Forbes (Bombay Ice, 1998) masterfully examines the relationship between personal identity and family history.

Forensic photographer Claire Fleetwood thinks herself an orphan until she inherits a sprawling North London home and gains “more history than she had ever wanted.” In her new basement, Claire unearths the journals of Magda Ironstone, possibly her great-grandmother, and some unsettling objects (bones, teeth, hair) collected by Magda’s husband, Joseph, all of which serve to provide more questions than answers about her family, which seems to have roots in India. Before Claire has truly settled in, the botany-obsessed neighborhood teenager who tends the house’s garden has been viciously murdered, and Jack Ironstone—Magda and Joseph’s grandson, Claire’s only living relation, and the teenager’s friend—seems determined to distract Claire from the ensuing investigation. A deliciously creepy character, Jack is spearheading a search for the green Tibetan poppy mentioned in Joseph’s journals that may contain a cure for cancer. Claire heads off to India, Nepal, and Tibet as the photographer for Jack’s expedition, which includes Nick Banerji, a one-armed artist she’s smitten with. While traveling, she pores over Magda’s journal and, in Forbes’s most stunning move, grows increasingly obsessed with her enigmatic ancestor, unconsciously reenacting scenes from Magda’s life while attempting to unravel both the murder mystery and her own complicated history. Forbes balances thorny subjects—botany, cancer research, mapping, postcolonial theory, obsessive love—with her plucky heroine’s surefire wit and her own lyric sensibility. Despite a few slow passages (the trek through Tibet gets a little tiresome) and gnarled plot points, she keeps the narrative sluicing along at the tempo of a potboiler.

Gives new meaning to the term “intelligent page-turner.”