AS A Harley Street psychiatrist, Jack Harrington is dedicated to helping his patients to reconstruct their shattered lives. On the surface, his own private life appears to be a model of control, but behind the professional persona he is as unable to escape his own past as any of his patients. His relationship with his sister, Kate, a psychologically unstable beauty, is both intense and complex, hinging on an unexplored tragedy from their childhood. Her emotional dependence upon him, and what he sees as his responsibilities to her, has already cost Jack his marriage, and has left him unwilling and unable to commit himself fully to any meaningful relationship.

When Kate announces that she is considering marrying, Jack sees a potential chance for both of them to escape the bonds of the past. But this hope, and the precarious balance of his sister’s damaged psyche, is threatened when he learns that their childhood home in Ireland is up for sale. Realising that the secrets he has tried to bury might at last become unearthed, Jack is left with no choice but to confront long suppressed truths.

Hart has delivered a darkly shining gem. In the flawed and vulnerable Jack Harrington she has created a character whose noble motives are not at first apparent, but who commands our attention nevertheless. The relationship between Jack and his sister is both intricate and unpredictable, veering towards, then shying away from the murky depths of incest that we at first assume.

One of Hart’s strengths is her graceful economy of style and her ability to sink her narrative hook with deceptive ease. As adept at manipulation as Jack himself, she manages to give a thriller-like sense of mystery and pace to a compelling tale of the bleaker side of familial relationships.

THE RECONSTRUCTIONIST
By Josephine Hart
Vintage, £6.99, 256pp
ISBN 0 099 42433 9

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