I wondered if this story was inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman – it was the closest real-life example I could think of to bolster Inga Karlson’s plausibility. Is it possible to have just one book that is universally adored? That is meaningful to so many people? That creates a cult-like following decades after it was published? And if this book existed, how likely is it that there would be multiple academics sitting in the English Department of a university in Queensland studying it? It’s really, really difficult to give yourself over to a book when the premise isn’t plausible, and that’s why I ran into strife with The Fragments. The woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist, and yet to Caddie, it feels genuine. In New York, celebrated author Inga Karlson dies in a fire and her highly anticipated second book is also burnt, leaving just a few scorched fragments of the manuscript.įifty years later, Brisbane bookseller Caddie Walker is at a Karlson exhibition featuring the famous fragments when she meets a charismatic older woman. The story alternates between 1930s New York and Brisbane in the 1980s. The Fragments is a literary mystery (in every sense of the word). I’m prefacing this review by saying that I like Toni Jordan’s writing (and in particular, Addition was a terrific book).
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