The Eye of the Beholder

by Margie Orford

Overview

Cora carries secrets her daughter can’t know.

Freya is frightened by what her mother leaves unsaid.

Angel will only bury the past if it means putting her abusers into the ground.

Angel is working in a wolf sanctuary in Canada when an abandoned dog is brought in – a dog she knows. The dog’s owner is missing, but has he been caught out in a blizzard or has something more sinister caught up with him?

Cora is running from a dangerous man. Attempting to bury her emotions (fear and anguish) in her art has brought her controversy all her career, but the truth behind her paintings could expose more than a model.

Freya is close with her mother but trying to build a life of her own. While searching for answers, she has her own reasons for trying to unearth her mother’s history.

One act of violence sets the three women on a collision course, each desperate to find the truth. In a nail-biting thriller set between the scorched red soil of South Africa, the pitiless snowfields of Canada and the chilly lochsides of western Scotland, each woman must contend with the spectres of male violence, sexual abuse and the choices we each make to keep our souls.   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838856809
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.67(w) x 8.66(h) x (d)

About the Author

Margie Orford is an award-winning journalist who has been dubbed the Queen of South African Crime Fiction. Her Clare Hart crime novels have been translated into ten languages and are being developed into a television series. She was born in London and grew up in Namibia. A Fulbright Scholar, she was educated in South Africa and the United States, has a doctorate in creative writing from the Universityof East Anglia and is an honorary fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. She is president Emerita of PEN South Africa and was the patron of Rape Crisis Cape Town while she lived in South Africa. She now lives in London.

@MargieOrford

Editorial Reviews

Orford has a rare ability to get under the skin of the genre's conventions

Irish Times

Chilling and somewhat complex, curling like a snake around your heart! . . . The story flows like an urgent river, and brings us into the heart of the world that only recently has been rocked by the #Metoo campaign . . . Powerful

IOL

Margie Orford is world-class. This is crime writing at its very best

DEON MEYER

Utterly brilliant. Gorgeous, unflinching and a total surprise

Superstar Margie Orford's writing has garnered acclaim everywhere . . . Her writing is cinematic, powerful and so close to the bone it almost cuts

From the Publisher

Insight, intrigue and devastating impact . . . at the heart of Beholder are secrets, damaging love and complex mother-daughter relationships

South Africa Sunday Times

Praise for Margie Orford: Margie Orford is a name you should commit to memory

Oprah Magazine O

Margie Orford gives genre writing swagger, she makes it look good . . . every detail convinces. Every sentence is clipped, pared down, muscular, every emotion captured with poise and precision

Slipnet

A stunner

The Big Thrill

Wonderfully crafted and fully engrossing

Michael Connelly

A fascinating, terrifying work focused on the power and destructive nature of the male gaze

South Africa news24

Focuses our gaze on secrets, obsession and intergenerational trauma . . . an exquisite work of art

Daily Maverick

Ultimately a novel about sexual violence . . . But both the villainy of the abuse endured by the women and the stark violence of the revenge ring disturbingly true

Spectator Australia

A hard-hitting, affecting novel about women who refuse to allow men off the hook

Irish Times - DECLAN BURKE

Utterly brilliant. Gorgeous, unflinching and a total surprise

FIAMMETTA ROCCO

The acclaimed 'Queen of Crime fiction' in South Africa takes a further step into the dark. The result is as compelling as it is frightening and deeply thought provoking. The Eye of the Beholder is sure to play a key role in the ongoing debate about what women and men are, and can be, for each other in these violent times

JACQUELINE ROSE

Orford truly understands the transformative effect of violence for those who survive it and those who visit it upon others. It gives her writing visceral power

DAMIAN BARR

A subtle, confrontational and disturbing read . . . mirrors contemporary society in a thought-provoking way

Sunday Times, South Africa - Margaret Von Klemperer

A tale of love and abuse that is as powerful as it is elegant - and it grips like a vice, too

IAN RANKIN

A suspenseful and wise study of surviving sexual abuse and trauma. Orford's prose is piercingly beautiful

KIM SHERWOOD

Margie Orford invented the genre and mastered it

POPPY SEBAG-MONTEFIORE

An immersive and chilling experience that compels the reader to confront the rage and shame the victims feel . . . hard to put down, even as it makes your blood curdle

Mail & Guardian - Mamaputle Boikanyo

Subtle, chilling to the bone and very contemporary. Margie Orford has a quietly understated, beautiful literary style

PETER JAMES