Soon
"A really penetrating and intense look at a certain group of powerful people in a small country. Soon is a wonderful novel, one that puts Charlotte Grimshaw up there with Ian McEwan."
"Full of delicious political and social satire " - The Daily Mail UK
"A truly riveting novel" - The Globe and Mail, Canada
"This is a truly riveting novel." - Toronto Globe and Mail
“Finally there is the stunning achievement of Soon…Grimshaw brilliantly demonstrates how far the boundaries of the crime genre can now be expanded. On one level Soon is an often satirical view of insider politics in a sister Commonwealth country. It is also an absorbing study in personal relationships…Crimes here are subtle - political, corporate and moral - but they fuel an accelerating crisis. And, suddenly, you realize you’ re enmeshed in an unconventional thriller that will carry you along to a smash climax.” - The Vancouver Sun
"Soon is a sly, masterly novel." - Malcolm Forbes, Literary Review UK
"One of the ten best summer reads." - Red Magazine UK
"An efficient, coolly poetic tale of Auckland's glitterati...darkly comic - paced like a classy thriller, it slips down as easily as the Hallwrights' dirty gin cocktails." - The List UK
During the long summer holiday, the Lampton and Hallwright families gather in a large beach house belonging to Prime Minister David Hallwright and his wife Roza. The weather is perfect and outwardly all is well, but the harmony is disturbed when Simon Lampton's brother arrives for a visit. Ford casts a cold eye over the company, barely disguising his contempt for David Hallwright. To add to Simon's discomfort a young man called Arthur Weeks makes contact, wanting to question Simon about his secret past affair, and Roza begins to tell her and David's small son Johnnie a continuous story about a group of fantasy creatures – a story that contains uncomfortable parallels with their current lives.
When Simon agrees to meet secretly with Arthur Weeks, the result will threaten the security of them all.
Charlotte Grimshaw's exhilaratingly gripping and clever narrative traces the lives of its beautiful people – "moral imbeciles" in Ford's words – as they jostle for position in their leader's court. This humane and capacious novel, generous and faithful to its characters in ways that they are not to each other, articulates the ancient idea that to be moral is an act of consciousness, an effort of will.
"You shouldn't get the impression that Soon is simply political satire, with names changed to keep readers guessing, or a send-up of middle-class mores. Grimshaw is going deeper... Suddenly Soon's almost a thriller, going places that you didn't expect - a thriller with real ethical weight. A thriller that sets up - just as The Night Book did - one hell of a cliffhanger ending." - Philip Matthews, Metro Magazine
Soon was published in New Zealand by Random House NZ, in the UK by Jonathan Cape and by Anansi in Canada
