The Legacy by Kirsten Tranter

The Legacy

Kirsten Tranter

This slow-burning character study anatomises the story of a friendship. Based on Henry James, it brings to life the conflicting emotions Julia and Ralph feel when Ingrid is reported dead after 9/11. Ensuing revelations make them reassess their relationships and their lives.

Extract
The time with Ralph and then with Ingrid seems so short when I look back on it now - the time when things were good, just beginning, the dynamic I seemed to spend for ever trying to recapture and recreate afterwards. It was short in terms of the actual days, weeks and months involved. There weren't many, compared with how many there have been since then. But those months were so full of what felt like then, and looks like now, an almost perfect kind of intimacy and intensity that makes that time extend outward artificially in the track of memory: Technicolour, oversaturated with detail, compared with the dimmer pasts that surround it.
Parallels
  • Portriat of a Lady by Henry James
  • The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Buy this book Borrow this book
Violence
Explicit sexual content