About the book

Peter Manson’s apparently successful life is turned upside down when his beloved teenage daughter Prue reveals she’s pregnant by her teacher, Gavin Sorenson. The very heart of the family is threatened as Peter has an intuitive sense that Gavin is on a personal quest for revenge.

As Peter becomes consumed by anxiety for his daughter, hatred of his son in law and lust for his secretary, his relationship with his wife, Cassie, becomes increasingly distant. With Peter’s marriage at breaking point and facing financial ruin, it’s only a matter of time before secrets from the past return to haunt their lives.

What I learned

Andrea Newman’s close third-person novel is one of the best examples of a psychological novel I’ve read.

I’d heard about A Bouquet of Barbed Wire when I was a young child. Its subject matter was said to be so transgressive and shocking it seemed amazing to have been allowed on TV at all. It’s actually been adapted for TV twice now, so that shows what I know. British public – your therapists await you.

The story starts off simply enough with a bored, slightly unsatisfied man working in publishing. It soon becomes clear that he has an unhealthy interest in his own daughter, which leads him to embark on an affair with his new secretary as a distraction tactic. What follows is an incredibly shocking, multi-POV exploration of how a seemingly well-adjusted family can come apart in the most horrific way. The book is shocking, fast-paced, and claustrophobic, and Newman ratchets up the tension throughout.

Even though the novel is at times incredibly difficult to read, Newman excels in moving POV characters and giving us insights into their individual, and very messed-up psyches. Each character is damaged in some way, and it becomes clear early on that the mix of damage and desire can only lead in one direction. I read the novel in grim fascination, waiting for the inevitable, horrific fall-out.

The book was written in 1969, which partly explains how some of the shocking domestic violence that occurs is brushed off by the characters.

No one, apart from the possible exception of Sarah the secretary, comes out of this story unscathed, but her palpable sense of panic which she realises that the affair she’d embarked on with Manson (no, not that one) is a self-constructed prison is some of the best, most immersive prose I’ve ever read.

The most masterful thing about A Bouquet of Barbed Wire is that, even though the characters’ actions and desires are shocking and at times incomprehensible, in the world of the story, they make perfect sense. Newman is adept at placing us in the minds of the characters and making their motivations and desires real.

This is an unputdownable must-read, and surely well past being declared called a modern classic. OK, I’m calling it: it’s a modern classic. You heard it here first.