The Stopped Heart

This overlong novel from British author Myerson (The Quickening) focuses on two families living in the same village near Ipswich in Essex, separated by 150 years. In the present, grief-stricken Mary Coles and her husband move to a run-down cottage with a large back garden, once a farmyard, to seek a new start after a tragedy that's only gradually revealed. Meanwhile, in the past, 13-year-old Eliza narrates the story of a red-haired stranger, James Dix, whose sudden arrival at her family's farm leads inexorably to trouble. Dix is a seducer whose tendency to violence gradually becomes clear, and wary Eliza is only one of his targets. Back in the present, Mary's married neighbor, Eddie, begins paying inappropriate attention to her. The forward-looking visions of Eliza's four-year-old sister, Lottie, and Mary's visions of the past connect the experiences of the two families, but this contrivance fails to unite the two stories into a suspenseful whole. Agent: Karolina Sutton, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Mar.)