This wonderfully acute and unsettling novel charts the trajectory of a woman's life and a couple's relationship during the last decade of the 20th century. Against a backdrop of the seismic nineties, and framed by two air disasters (Lockerbie late 1988 and the twin towers 9/11 2001), it's the story of Genevieve, psychiatric nurse, wife, mother, daughter, who's trying to keep a whole lot of stuff airborne while things fall apart, inside and out. Her husband is a filmmaker, usually absent, at first on small-budget art films ("The Snow Queen") in out of the way places. But, his career takes off, and suddenly he's making big budget star-vehicle movies (still "The Snow Queen") in exotic locations. While her life narrows (babies, breastfeeding, builders), his expands: this is her narrative, addressed to him, trying to make sense of their lives and the forces - external and internal, family history and genetics, ambition and domesticity - which pull them apart. Her work, which drives her nuts but keeps her sane, her anarchic friend and colleague Sid, and the sad, crazed women in her charge provide a hilarious, heartbreaking backdrop to a world going off the rails.
Unputdownable, funny and sad, "Descent" marks the arrival of a talented new novelist.