The Child Inside, By Suzanne Bugler

She risked it all to run away with her showgirls...

The Child Inside gives us a well-worn plot: a married woman risks everything when she embarks on an affair with an old flame.

What distinguishes Suzanne Bugler's novel is the unsympathetic nature of the central character; the errant housewife is self- involved and unrepentant. Her narration seems unreliable, and this lends the book an intriguing ambiguity. Unfortunately, there are some big flaws: Bugler's prose is peppered with ill-judged similes ("my breasts tingled and fizzed like a couple of showgirls, waiting for their cue to perform"; "she held her hardness in front of her like a huge, giant bat") and one soon wearies of the relentlessly gloomy tone.