Louise Doughty has done it again. A Bird in Winter is her 10th novel and it follows a string of addictive thrillers (including the bestsellers Platform Seven, Apple Tree Yard and Whatever You Love) in which she writes about a modern woman on the edge. Here, an office worker walks out on her life, abandoning her job and family. But is this a fanciful midlife adventure, or is she fleeing something?
For the protagonist, Bird, flight comes first with desperate urgency, then with paranoia and hypervigilance: “I want to be right by the doors and windows on the ground floor so I will wake up if someone tries to break in… Sometimes I get out from under the duvet and go to the small window that looks out over the road, peering through the narrow gap between the window frame and the curtain.” It turns out that Bird’s paranoia is justified: she is indeed being hunted. We discover her professional history in the army and the secret service and deduce that she is not a disgruntled everywoman who’s had it with corporate life, but a government spy with substance, secrets and real enemies who pursue her northwards, as far as Iceland.
