The Illuminations
by Andrew O’Hagan
2014 / 305 pages
rating – 8 / contemp. fiction

Typical contemporary fiction with the frame in today’s world and the interior story (at least one of them) far enough in the past to consider that part to be historical fiction.  In this case Anne, an elderly woman living in a senior home in southern Scotland  is having a few more problems with dementia and her daughter is not much help at all.  Only a kindly neighbor and Anne’s grandson,  a recent returned veteran from Afghanistan, can get through to her.  Maureen the neighbor and Luke the grandson have their own issues which give texture to the narrative.   Luke is trying to forget his crude and violent past while his grandmother is trying to remember her own.  >>>>MORE>>>>