Book Review: Magpie

It's all about who you let in your life. Magpie is ostensibly constellated around Marisa, a single woman in her late 20s who makes a living selling personalised children's storybooks from her website, Telling Tales (that in itself is a big clue!). But when she meets Jake at a fancy-dress party, it's as if she has found the love of her life. And three months later, she moves in with him, only to realise that the emotional stability she has been looking for may be forever elusive when another woman enters their life. Magpie, alluding to the bird which is considered a signal of bad luck for the superstitious and has a reputation for stealing shiny trinkets (according to European folklore), works both as a suspenseful psychological thriller and an absorbing drama in which the themes of mental health, infertility and toxic relationships are juxtaposed against an exploration of motherhood. It's also a cleverly laid out riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, even as author Elizabeth Day manages a tangle of subplots with practiced efficiency, quickening the pace of revelations till the final pages, turning the entire story on its head.