The Shadow of the Object

The Shadow of the Object is a reflective, image-heavy novel about Flora, a Mexican-British woman in her early forties whose accidental encounter with an elderly collector changes the direction of her life. Its central story is comparatively simple—an injury, a hospital friendship, a death and Flora’s growing relationship with the dead woman’s son—but the narrative continually expands through memories, optical devices, animals, dreams, historical anecdotes and objects that seem to preserve traces of the people who once handled them.

Flora lives in London, where she works as a master polisher in a Soho jewellery workshop specialising in silver skulls, animals and eccentric rings. She has never fulfilled her earlier ambitions to become a painter, photographer, writer or dancer, but polishing gives her a modest sense of mastery. Her work is not merely cosmetic: she believes polishing can subtract part of an object’s history, exaggerate another part or manufacture a fictional past through the strategic use of shine and shadow. She lives alone on the upper floor of a house belonging to a retired couple, sharing the building with their enormous cats, Lurker and Pouncer. She has had numerous brief romances but avoids enduring attachment and considers solitude both a refuge and a disappointment.

The novel opens during a rare visit to Flora’s family home in Mexico City. She has not visited in three years and has saved for ten months to afford the trip. On the third night, after watching a film with her mother and stepfather in their bedroom, she gets up and waves goodnight. The family’s elderly Alsatian, Diogenes—usually called Diego—suddenly attacks her. His teeth sink deeply into her left hand, and one canine catches on a bone before her stepfather manages to force him to release her. The family later explains the attack by suggesting that Diogenes, whose eyesight is deteriorating, saw only a disembodied hand moving in the darkness.