Dark Thread

Kate and her mother are artisan weavers with a workshop in a renovated mill. When her mother is killed in a road accident, Kate thinks she is responsible - after all, they had just been arguing and Kate had started it. The mill seems full of ghosts and Kate is drawn back into the past and the lives of the children who once worked there. It is a place that is full of dangers but it offers an opportunity for reparation to be made as Kate saves little Tabby from drowning. Weaving is a powerful metaphor for continuity, for links between past and present and for reconstruction as the work of the artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois has demonstrated. Chandler's novel also focuses on the theme of mother and daughter and the most powerful sections of this rather unevenly written novel are those which deal with the processes of weaving work in which these tensions can be worked upon and in some ways resolved. Although the passage from present to past in the novel is abrupt, Chandler has an acute ear for dialogue and a great ability to evoke the past, effortlessly incorporating the detail of daily domestic and mill drudgeries. Overall, a convincing debut.