More sexual politics in Tobin's first novel, a mystery set in a 17th-century English village, brings to life the poor and the marginal of the past without ever sentimentalising them.
Bone House is an Elizabethan term meaning 'the body'. In those days, beautiful women were fecund and large, able to produce children easily and abundantly. The author says: "The plot turns on the notion that our physical selves influence both our identity and our fate: that in 1603 matters of the flesh (beauty, size, deformity, decrepitude) shaped not only who we were, but what would befall us."
(Review, £6.99)
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