Alys, Always: A superbly disquieting psychological thriller

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See you later,” I say to Mary as I follow Polly’s slender, little figure up the oatmeal-coloured stairs. We fill the time with coffee and mint chocolate thins in little slippery envelopes, and my mother lays the table for breakfast, and then we watch several finalists competing for a part in a London stage musical, and after that there’s a film, an action movie set in ancient Rome. My mother fidgets uneasily during the fight sequences and the sex scenes. In the second commercial break, she collects the cups and chocolate wrappers and says, “Well, Frances, I hope you have everything you need. Sleep well, dear.” Then it’s just my father and me, sitting side by side in the darkened room, eyes fixed on the screen like astronauts preparing for countdown. Like so many of my mother’s questions, this one anticipates a particular answer, in which she will take only the most limited interest. Conversation with my mother rarely goes anywhere unexpected. She has a horror of the unexpected and her entire life is structured to keep it at bay.

Alys, Always runs at the Barn till Saturday, April 22. Evening performances at 8pm, matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm.

Polly’s really crying now, into a handful of Kleenex. Edward is very still. I leave a little pause, just a tiny beat, and then, because it’s irresistible, I say, “And of course, when I told her I could see the ambulance coming, she said, ‘Tell them I love them.’ ” And yet she never forgot the truly important things,” he says, raising a finger. “When you got a terrible review, Alys was always the first person on the phone—the only person you could face speaking to—to suggest a long walk, a bottle of claret, or a light spot of firebombing.”

I’ve stopped under some trees and am waiting there, warily looking up at the sky, when I hear someone calling my name. Well, it’s good that you could make it,” he says, directing his gaze over my shoulder, processing, assessing, wondering—with a certain weariness—how much longer this thing will go on. I step towards him and reach up and kiss him on the cheek and see, from his expression, that this was rather unwelcome, and then I give him a little smile and push away through the crowd towards the stairs. Alice Croot was totally believable as the slightly narcissistic, heartbroken daughter, turning in another fine performance in her third production for the Barn. Alys, Always cleverly shows how… one event ties previously unconnected people together… Lane’s narrative voice is captivating, absorbing the reader almost immediately and throughout the novel’s various episodes of entanglement, separation and high drama. Her use of the present tense means that we are right beside Frances as her story unfolds… and her characters are quirky and believable individuals. Alys, Always is a fine portrayal of how people deal with loss and learn to accept ‘the tinpot vulnerability of human existence’.” Driving home to London one winter evening, Frances happens upon a car that has flipped onto its side. She comforts the dying driver, Alys Kyte, and hears her final words. The wife of a celebrated novelist, Alys moved in rarefied circles, and when Frances agrees to meet the bereaved family, she glimpses a world entirely foreign to her: cultured, wealthy, and privileged. While slowly forging a friendship with Alys’s carelessly charismatic daughter, Frances finds her own life takes a dramatic turn, propelling her from an anonymous existence as an assistant editor for the books section of a newspaper to the heights of literary society.The first night Frances stays at the Kytes’ house in Biddenbrooke she is very perceptive about how Honor feels about Teddy: “ You’re getting bored, aren’t you? And you can’t quite bring yourself to admit it yet.” Discuss other instances where Frances successfully “reads” other characters. How does this intuition help her?

On an Android phone, you can text the word ‘call’ to 7726. You will then be asked for the phone number the scam was sent from. Scam text messages can also be forwarded to 7726 to report them. They won’t miss them,” she says. “Take them, for heaven’s sake. Alys would have hated those flowers to just sit there in a dark room, not being looked at. Honestly, it’s fine, no one minds. Take them.” This reading group guide for Alys Always includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. My mother has gussied up the room for me, as she always does, as if the gussying up will somehow distract me from the shot springs in the bed, which I’ve had since primary school. It’s like a little stage set, every painstaking detail suggesting gracious living. In this first novel, a female newspaper sub-editor finds a car after a terrible accident and stays witNo . . . she wasn’t keen on parties. She was always better in small groups,” I say, smiling, as if Mary has reminded me of some little memory—something almost painfully intimate. “She was wonderful with the Azarias and the Titovs, and she could keep her end up, but she was never particularly at home with all that. She always seemed happiest pottering around the garden at Biddenbrooke.” Edward is midtwenties, tall, fair, slight-looking, and his greeting is noncommittal, courteous but impersonal. Polly, a few years younger, comes away from the French windows towards me, and as we shake hands, she twists her mouth to stop herself from crying. Her narrow, white face is blotchy with old tears. Frances Thorpe is the underling on a newspaper’s book desk: patronised by her colleagues and constantly overlooked by her boss. However, after arriving on the scene of a fatal accident whilst driving home to London one night, she unwittingly gets a glimpse at a previously unimaginable lifestyle of success and privilege. When she later meets the grieving family, she lies about their mother’s last words, and so begins her journey into ambitious greed and deceit.

When Sergeant Kate Williams first calls Frances about meeting the Kytes, Frances immediately declines “without having to reflect.” Why didn’t Frances want to meet the family initially? How do you view her sudden reversal after realizing that “Alice Kite” was really Alys Kyte, wife of the famous writer, Laurence Kyte? I am left thinking about everything that happpened, and what might have happened after the end of the final chapter. I listen, holding my breath, as he talks about first hearing about her one evening at the French House, shortly after she’d arrived at art school from Salisbury. “We were all very down on Alys,” he says, with a dry, little cough of amusement. “We thought she must be some ghastly Lorelei, come to steal Laurence away from us. And that belief flourished until we actually met her. And then we all, without exception, fell in love with her.” Not as good as I should be. But as I’ve lost my sight I’ve become less beady. Something awful happened to me, but everyone has their shit to deal with… As you get older, you realise that. A group of people comes into the hall behind us in a burst of wind and raindrops. Mary Pym is among them, her hair slightly coarsened by the weather. She starts to prink in the hall mirror, then catches sight of me over her shoulder.

Wonderfully observed…, A gripping psychologically complex achievement whose greatest success is the lingering sense of unease” Sunday Telegraph. Journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 debut novel Alys, Always was one of those psychological thrillers which got people talking due to its simultaneously simple and clever plot.