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London Review of Books

A Bowl of Wheetos subscriber-only content

Eleanor Birne

  • The Story of You by Julie Myerson

Julie Myerson believes in hauntings. She has spent the last 13 years writing variations on the same novel. She writes repeatedly about the death of babies and children, and the impact that death has on the parents. In Me and the Fat Man (1998) the baby dies in its pram. In Something Might Happen (2003) a daughter is washed off a beach into the sea. Deaths occur when guilty mothers’ backs are turned. In Me and the Fat Man the mother is asleep. In Something Might Happen she is having a dalliance with a man in a beach hut. In Myerson’s new novel, The Story of You, the baby is ingeniously killed in a freak domestic accident.

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Eleanor Birne lives in London.