THE STRENGTH OF THE SUN

An intricate and mysterious account of several people in New Zealand and Great Britain whose lives become intertwined through fate, happenstance, and human error.

Antipodean second-novelist Chidgey (after the Orange Prize–nominated In a fishbone church), like most inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere, is conscious of the quirks of geography. The great eclipse of the sun that took place in 1988 in New Zealand made those faraway islands, for a short time, into a major tourist attraction for Europeans and other northern folk—like Patrick Mercer, a British medievalist who flew down and had a brief affair with a woman named Colette whom he befriended there. Eleven years later, Patrick has a serious car accident and ends up in the hospital, where he remains unconscious for some time. Friends (“The Friends of Patrick Mercer”) look after him and begin sending letters describing his recovery to Colette Hawkins, a university student in New Zealand who has never met Patrick at any time in her life. Or has she? Colette is able to live with mysteries better than most, and she babysits for Malcolm and Ruth Pearse, whose older daughter disappeared without a trace in 1988. Colette traveled throughout Europe some years earlier with her boyfriend Justin Warwick. Did she meet this Patrick Mercer then? Although she has no recollection of him, her curiosity becomes stronger and stronger as the letters continue to arrive. Ruth Pearse, meanwhile, remains understandably obsessed with the fate of her daughter—and she disappears herself one night. Is there some common thread here—other than Colette? What ties these random people together? Well you might ask.

A disappointment: Chidgey’s US debut is nicely set up but badly executed, this seems to promise a resolution that never arrives.