Birthright
2023
First Published
3.39
Average Rating
394
Number of Pages
A sublime psychological thriller from Polari Prize-shortlisted Charles Lambert. Sixteen-year-old Fiona inhabits a privileged world of English affluence, though her relationship with her widowed mother is strained. When she discovers an old newspaper clipping of a woman and her daughter – the little girl a mirror image of her own younger self – she becomes convinced she has a true family elsewhere. Four years later, with the help of charming fraudster Patrick, Fiona drops everything to seek out her doppelgänger in Italy. Fiona arrives in Rome to find Maddy living hand to mouth with her alcoholic mother. Spooked by the appearance of this strange girl wearing her face and stalking her every move, Maddy wants nothing to do with her. Caught in a surreal push-and-pull, the two are both fascinated and repulsed by the oddly familiar other, each coveting a different life. But they aren’t the only ones trying to control their fate, and the two women will soon learn that people aren’t always what they seem – though blood may still prove thicker than water. Birthright is a dark, gripping literary thriller for fans of Ian McEwan, Rupert Thomson and Edward St Aubyn
Avg Rating
3.39
Number of Ratings
41
5 STARS
15%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
17%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads
Author
Charles Lambert
Author · 11 books
Charles Lambert was born in the United Kingdom but has lived in Italy for most of his adult life. His most recent novel is Birthright, set in Rome in the 1980s and examining what happens when two young women discover that they are identical twins, separated at birth. In 2022, he published The Bone Flower, a Gothic love story with a sinister edge, set in Victorian London. His previous novel, Prodigal, shortlisted for the Polari Prize in 2019, was described by the Gay & Lesbian Review as "Powerful… an artful hybrid of parable (as the title signifies), a Freudian family romance, a Gothic tale, and a Künstlerroman in the tradition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” For the Kirkus Review, The Children's Home, published in 2016, was 'a one-of-a-kind literary horror story', while Two Dark Tales, published in October 2017, continues to disturb. Earlier books include three novels, a collection of prize-winning short stories and a memoir, With a Zero at its Heart, selected by the Guardian as one of its top ten books from 2014.
