February

February, by Lisa Moore, Chatto & Windus RRP£12.99, 320 pages

On Valentine’s Day in 1982, the Ocean Ranger rig sank off Newfoundland with the loss of 84 crew members – a real-life tragedy that provides the background for Lisa Moore’s Man Booker Prize long-listed novel.

Left with four children (including one unborn) after her husband’s death, Helen O’Mara is daily forced to recall his absence; a quarter of a century later, her son John rings home from abroad to announce that he has got a girl pregnant. Moore subtly counterpoints the aftermath of both “accidents”. The story she tells is slow to unfurl and patterned with symbols: there is water, water everywhere dripping from falls and overflowing from baths. But it is also energised by a flinty wit that pits high emotion against domestic banality.

The result is a very moving study of memory and grief, while there is enough well-placed grit in the plot mechanism to make the redemptive ending seem hard won.