Tangerine by Christine Mangan

What a gorgeous cover!

This is Christine Mangan's debut novel. And what a debut! A psychological thriller that makes it hard to read sometimes. It is like a nightmare. Alice and Lucy are the two protagonists who became friends during their studies at Bennington College. They shared a room and they stuck to themselves. The story starts in 1956 in Tangier, where Alice and her husband John live. Every other chapter is narrated by Alice and Lucy. We get hints that something happened back there in college, which destroyed their friendship, but it is only later that we learn what it was all about.

It is difficult to tell the story without spoilers, so just a few thoughts about it. Most of the story takes place in Tanger where Alice is living with her husband. One day out of the blue Lucy shows up. Alice lives with a trauma from her parents' death, and her life is always affected by it. While Lucy takes in Tangier and its atmosphere from the beginning, Alice is spending her days at home, dreading to venture outside. Lucy manages to help Alice to regain a little bit of her confidence and they discover Tangier together.

This is a story about a friendship during the college years. However, there comes a day when it is not enough for one of them, and this is when a problem arise. It is a story that captures you. All seems fine until you realise that all is not what it seems. One have the same claustrophobic feeling as when reading Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca or is watching Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the end you do not know who is telling the truth. Who is sane and who is not?

I found it difficult to read once I realised what it was all about. Nightmarish! Manipulation can take you a long way it seems, and it is difficult to discover if the person is very good at it. Wherever you turn, you loose!

“....I knew there was no such thing as an absolute. Everything changes, sooner or later. Time moves along, without constraints - no matter how hard one may attempt to pause, to alter, to rewrite it.....Quite simply, there is nothing to stop it, nothing at all.”                                                                                              Christine Mangan, Tangerine

A marvellous debut book by Christine Mangan. From Harper Collins Publishers' website I read that she has a PhD in English from University College Dublin. Her thesis focused on 18th-century Gothic literature, and she has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Southern Maine. Although you can not say that Tangerine is a Gothic novel, it has some of the gothic feelings. Something which is just a feeling and not always visible. Lingering in the air, and by the time you realise what is going on, it is too late.