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Book review: Hearts and Minds
Fiction: A well-researched and pitiless look at London and its myriad immigrant and indigenous inhabitants
Hearts and Minds takes a "pitiless look" at London, its immigrants, and the people that exploit them, said Penny Perrick in the Sunday Times. Polly is a human rights lawyer who scarcely notices her Russian au pair until she turns up dead on Hampstead Heath.
In this "very interconnected story", Polly's life becomes entwined with that of Job, a Zimbabwean torture victim. Anna, a Ukrainian sold into sex slavery, and Ian, a South African who teaches in an inner-city school, also cross her path.
Recently there has been a flood of stories about the capital's illegal migrants, said Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent. Yet Amanda Craig's novel "holds its own" in a crowded market. Her book is "precise", well researched and "a terrific read". There is "much in Hearts and Minds to praise", said Stevie Smith in the Guardian: its ambition, for instance, and its ethical stance.
But its "proliferating plots" take on more characters and issues than it can convincingly dramatise, and Craig slips in too many "mini-lectures" on the condition of England. Still, it’s "a very honourable defeat".
Hearts and Minds, by Amanda Craig, 432pp (Little, Brown, £17.99) The Week Bookshop £16.19 (incl p&p) ·
