Peripheral Vision

The aftermath of a child’s injury leaves a trail of love, loss and mystery around generations of women in British author—and former nurse—Ferguson’s finely wrought American debut. After an accident in 1953 threatens a young boy named George with blindness, his mother, Ruby, becomes the target of an anonymous, vicious letter-writer and begins to lose her grip on reality. Meanwhile a young nurse and a medical student meet while sitting over George’s hospital bed and begin an all-consuming romance. Their happy courtship worries working-class nurse Iris when she enters her boyfriend Rob’s posh and unwelcoming world. Forty years later, Sylvia, a talented London eye surgeon reads the crumbling old hospital notes detailing George’s surgery and must confront her lack of inner vision when it comes to her new child, her family and a life-long friendship. Ferguson does a beautiful job of drawing together the pieces—the relationship between our physical and moral ailments, and injuries with our inner pain and suffering—and her nonlinear storytelling builds a sense of foreboding, mystery and pathos as the fates of all these characters’ interlocking lives are revealed. (Oct.)