Synopses & Reviews
On a cold night in autumn, an unspeakable crime shatters the quiet calm in a small seaside village. Tess wills her best friend, Lennie, to be injured or even trapped somewhere, but on some level she can already feel her absence. When she hears that Lennie has been found murdered, the pain is impossible to bear.
Ted Lacey comes to town to help the police better understand the crime, to get to know the families involved, and to comfort the community. His skill is to fade into the background in order to see everything with clarity, and he sees Tess etched in full relief: a woman on her own terms, outside the boundaries of wife, mother, or friend. In the shock that follows Lennie's death, Tess finds herself drawn to Ted Lacey in ways she can't explain. At a time when she should pull her husband and four children in close, she finds herself stepping away, powerless in the face of her attraction to Ted Lacey's steady presence. In a world where grief has suspended all rules, Tess uncovers emotions long buried, and she unravels the extraordinary skein of secrets, evasions, and repressed passion her life has become.
With palpable, explosive tension, Julie Myerson intimately examines the lives of two families whose happiness has been ravaged by the unthinkable. Written in an astonishingly original voice, Something Might Happen is a powerful exploration of grief fused with desire, and an unforgettable portrait of tangled lives in a small town.
Review
"[A] riveting and wrenching story told with beautifully rendered domestic detail. Myerson's writing is so strong that it's impossible not to see and smell what is happening....Not easy to read, but hard to put down." Booklist
Review
"An intelligent account of a town succumbing to mass hysteria but much too gradual in its pace." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[R]ather predictable but artful....Despite the well-worn plot, the author manages to create something rich and intimate, a tale steeped in the physical impulses and mental habits of family life." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A brilliantly atmospheric novel which shows with truth and force the way that violent crime disturbs everything that it does not destroy. Julie Myerson captures the terror of a town and people changed forever by a savage murder. Myerson's voice is compelling and readable and intimate as it leads the reader into the deep dark waters of grief." Helen Dunmore, author of The Siege and With Your Crooked Heart
Review
"Dark, sexy, and insolent. I hope to be startled and challenged by novels. Myerson more than obliges." Jim Crace, Daily Mail (U.K.)
Review
"This is a tour de force, the best novel Julie Myerson has written and that is saying something." Kate Kellaway, The Observer
Review
"Myerson's writing is fastidiously honest, almost supernaturally sensitive, fluent and very moving." Lesley Glaister, Literary Review
Synopsis
Like Anita Shreve, Myerson writes in a literary and yet accessible manner. Her fifth book is a story of a troubled woman who falls for an outsider who has come to uncover the truth.
About the Author
Julie Myerson has written four other novels. She lives in South London with her husband and their three children.