Shrewd ... If One of Us is an entertaining family saga of privilege and comeuppance, it is also a consummate novel of suspense in which revelations detonate with lethal accuracy.
She has returned to the intimate family dynamics at which she excels, combined with a brilliantly propulsive, almost whodunnit-ish plot and an astute analysis of power ... One of Us is all the better for not giving up on its own darkness.
One of Us is littered with posh people behaving badly, and normal people caught in the crossfire, in a futile search for justice. But where Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, with its sumptuous prose and meticulous attention to detail, felt so real that the emergence of a dancing Margaret Thatcher was utterly seamless, One of Us is a parody of contemporary British life, a 350-page episode of Dead Ringers.
Day writes with intelligence, wit and a coldly observant eye. Her satire is precise but never overdrawn, capturing the self-delusions of the wealthy with cool restraint. The archetypes are familiar but her control of tone and timing keeps the story taut. One of Us is an engrossing, darkly funny account of envy and power, and also a tightly constructed thriller exposing the black hole at the heart of privilege.
