HOME FIRES, by Elizabeth Day. Bloomsbury, 2013, 256 pp., ￡11.99 (paperback)
Elizabeth Day's first novel, "Scissors, Paper, Stone," a taut, beautifully written drama, won a Betty Trask award. It was about a mother and a daughter who were holding things together by keeping a secret. This, the writer's second novel, has a similarly claustrophobic atmosphere. Unspoken truths threaten to pull apart one family's illusions about itself.
On the surface, this is the story of the tension between a married couple and the mother-in-law. But there's a fourth character, painfully missing. Max, the 21-year-old only son of Caroline and Andrew, has been killed by a land mine while on service in Central Africa. His parents are barely emerging from their grief only a few months later when they have to face the fact that Andrew's mother, Elsa, can no longer cope alone and needs to come and live with them.