A brilliantly observed modern morality tale, Talitha Stevenson’s Exposure explores the terrible effects of deceit, obsession, and shame on a dangerously complacent family.
Alistair Langford, a respected and powerful barrister, has been hiding his past since he left his hometown of Dover to study at Oxford in the late 1950s. Embarrassed by his working-class upbringing in a guesthouse run by his single mother, with whom he has not had any contact for forty years, he has lied about himself to everyone in his life since Oxford, including his wife, Rosalind, and his two children, Luke and Sophie. But after the death of his mother and a one-night stand with a devious defense witness, his tightly woven tapestry of lies begins to unravel.
Exposure is a deftly plotted, psychologically suspenseful, and compulsively readable novel from one of the most exciting young fiction writers today.
PRAISE FOR EXPOSURE
"Talitha Stevenson has written a rich, deep and mesmerizing novel that simultaneously projects a sense of casual grace and of inexorability which I am tempted to say is like life itself, except of course that life is seldom lived at such an acute, Jamesian pitch of hyper-awareness, which is why we need novels. Especially novels like Exposure. Stevenson has an incredible talent; she writes like a very old soul, with an exquisitely-tuned Catholic sensitivity to sin, guilt and sexual obsession."--Jay McInerney
UK PRAISE FOR EXPOSURE
"A triumphant read . . . What Stevenson describes with gobsmacking accuracy is our primal fear that life will unceremoniously unravel." - The Independent
"A saga of family dysfunction, rather in the manner of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or Justin Cartwright's The Promise of Happiness."- The Times
