2010年倫敦書展重點小說之一

THE LEGACY is a literary mystery set in Sydney and New York. Julia, a student at Sydney University, is struggling with her unrequited love for her best friend, Ralph, when his recently orphaned cousin Ingrid is taken into his household. Ralph falls unhappily in love with beautiful Ingrid, but she leaves for New York after she comes into a large inheritance and marries the charismatic but sinister Gil Grey, an art dealer and father to child art prodigy Fleur. On September 11 she has an appointment downtown and is never seen again. Ever.

Two years later, Julia travels to New York at Ralph’s request to search for answers about Ingrid’s life there. She gets to know some of Ingrid’s friends and places and gets to know about Ingrid’s secrets and slips ambivalently into her life.

Julia gleans more disturbing hints about the possible truth the longer she spends in New York, and suspects that Ingrid’s disappearance may be related to the mystery surrounding Fleur’s art and gets more driven than ever to know what actually happened, Ingrid might have been murdered.

THE LEGACY reshapes elements of Henry James’ masterpiece into a contemporary meditation on friendship, love, loss and redemption.

 

Kirsten Tranter’s poetry, short stories, reviews and literary criticism have appeared in Australian and international publications. She completed a Ph.D. in English at Rutgers University and has taught literature and creative writing at Rutgers, City College New York, and the University of Sydney. In 2008 she was awarded an Emerging Writer’s Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to write THE LEGACY. She is working at her second novel.