I went through a tough spate of reading not-so-great books in Autumn, and upsettingly this falls into that bracket. I'd not come across Apple Tree Yard before it was next in line for my book club read, and I had to pick it up. There's a BBC series on it that I'm pretty sure I won't watch, *but* I have heard good things about.
Apple Tree Yard is a hybrid between a crime fiction novel and general adult fiction. Yvonne Carmichael, our protagonist, has a love-filled but uneventful marriage. Her kids are grown up and she's never quite reached the peaks that she imagines in her career as a scientific researcher. Everything plods along until she meets a stranger, and begins an affair with him. Yvonne doesn't know who he is: she doesn't even know his name, but she suspects that he may be covert for a secret (government agency) reason.
As the novel progresses, Yvonne's life is split in two: her peaceful home life, and the one she's really interested in. When her two worlds collide in a tragic way at a party for scientific researchers, Yvonne's life becomes harder and harder to control. All along, we know that the present Yvonne is on trial in the docks, but the author keeps you guessing right up until the end to show you what for.
This novel comes with a big trigger warning for rape/sexual assault. The scene that contains it is very graphic, and the aftermath of the character deciding whether or not to report the rape can also be triggering.
The novel started off, and continued, very slowly. I'm not sure if it was a lot shorter originally, and had been padded out as the author made edits, but it really did drag in my opinion. However, all the layers of description and backstory probably made it a pretty good choice for a TV series.
The rape and aftermath were probably the strongest part of the book. It really looked into why someone might not report a rape, what kind of things you might bring into question surrounding it, and how hard it is to recover from sexual assault. Although it would have been less upsetting if the scene had been described less viscerally, it does highlight how horrifying it can be, and strips away the suggestion that it's always a woman's fault.
I really wanted to enjoy this, and there were parts that made it an interesting book. I'll be giving it 3 stars because it was thought-provoking, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
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