When it comes to piecing together a narrative, knowing exactly where to start, what to include and what to leave out is vital. So discovers Annie, one of two central characters in Jo Leevers’ mystery-freighted first novel, Tell Me How This Ends.
Annie, who’s in her 60s, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer when she signs up for a charitable initiative called the Life Stories Project. The aim is that she’ll receive a bound copy of her own life story for friends and relatives to remember her by, except that Annie has neither. Nor is she seeking to celebrate her life: all she wants is a clear conscience.
She turns out to have had a vibrant younger sister who vanished on 21 December 1974, aged 18. A pile of Kath’s clothes left beside the Grand Union Canal led police to conclude she’d drowned herself. Afterwards, Annie fell into the grip of an abusive husband, whose subsequent death she’s cagey about.
Fond of zany vintage clothing and sweet treats, she’s an easy character to spend time with all the same. Not so 32-year-old Henrietta, who’s tasked with coaxing Annie’s life story out of her. A gauche, obsessively methodical missionary’s daughter, Henrietta lives alone with her dyspeptic rescue mutt Dave and descends from a long line of oddball literary heroines. Think Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant or Bonnie Garmus’s Elizabeth Zott but without the plausibility – at least initially.
The narrative alternates between Annie and Henrietta’s viewpoints, and after a sluggish start, the women become a sympathetic double act, their fledgling bond generating its own dynamism. Naturally, Henrietta can’t resist the cold case that is Kath’s disappearance, and her sleuthing quickens the plot, which unfolds over a few months.
It’s a lot to weave together, yet Leevers manages to work the strands into a pleasingly complex narrative, flecked with reflections on the healing properties of storytelling. Of course a tale’s ending is just as important as its beginning, and this promising, poignant debut concludes with that vital ingredient: a well-crafted twist.
• Tell Me How This Ends by Jo Leevers is published by Lake Union (£8.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
