Exposure - by Talitha Stevenson (Paperback)

About the Book

A deftly plotted, suspenseful morality tale explores the dangerous pleasure of offering charity, the effects of deceit and shame on a rigidly complacent family, and the nature of love among family and friends.

Book Synopsis

A brilliantly observed modern morality tale, Talitha Stevenson's Exposure explores the terrible effects of deceit, obsession, and shame on a dangerously complacent family.

Alistair Langford, a respected and powerful barrister, has been hiding his past since he left his hometown of Dover to study at Oxford in the late 1950s. Embarrassed by his working-class upbringing in a guesthouse run by his single mother, with whom he has not had any contact for forty years, he has lied about himself to everyone in his life since Oxford, including his wife, Rosalind, and his two children, Luke and Sophie. But after the death of his mother and a one-night stand with a devious defense witness, his tightly woven tapestry of lies begins to unravel.

Exposure is a deftly plotted, psychologically suspenseful, and compulsively readable novel from one of the most exciting young fiction writers today.

From the Back Cover

"An unapologetic love story, reminding us first of our fragility and then of the ability to forgive." -- Entertainment Weekly
Alistair Langford, a powerful lawyer, has been hiding his past since he went to Oxford. Embarrassed by his working-class upbringing and his single mother, with whom he has not had any contact for forty years, he has lied about himself to everyone in his life, including his wife and children. But he succumbs to a reckless one-night stand with a devious defense witness-- and his tightly woven tapestry of lies begins to unravel.
Meanwhile his son Luke is enmeshed in a torrid affair with a beautiful and self-involved actress. When she leaves him, he sets out on an increasingly dangerous course in his desperation to win her back.
A brilliantly observed, highly suspenseful tale, Talitha Stevenson's Exposure explores the dark secrets of sexual obsession and the nature - and danger -- of love.
"The lives being lived are messily realistic and extremely engaging. Stevenson writes with a careful grace, and an emotional honesty that is wise well beyond her 28 years."--New York Post
Talitha Stevenson was born in London in 1977. Her journalism has appeared in the Daily Mail and The Guardian. An Empty Room, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guildford Book Festival's Pendleton May First Novel Award. She has lived and studied in Oxford, Florence, and London, where she currently resides.
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Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR EXPOSURE

"Talitha Stevenson has written a rich, deep and mesmerizing novel that simultaneously projects a sense of casual grace and of inexorability which I am tempted to say is like life itself, except of course that life is seldom lived at such an acute, Jamesian pitch of hyper-awareness, which is why we need novels. Especially novels like Exposure. Stevenson has an incredible talent; she writes like a very old soul, with an exquisitely-tuned Catholic sensitivity to sin, guilt and sexual obsession."--Jay McInerney

UK PRAISE FOR EXPOSURE

"A triumphant read . . . What Stevenson describes with gobsmacking accuracy is our primal fear that life will unceremoniously unravel." - The Independent

"A saga of family dysfunction, rather in the manner of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or Justin Cartwright's The Promise of Happiness."- The Times