The Loss Adjustor
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Review
'Campbell renders her narrator's inner voice in graceful prose.' --Independent on Sunday
'Subtle and haunting... Campbell writes beautifully, drawing you into Caro's world' --Daily Mail
'Subtle and haunting... Campbell writes beautifully, drawing you into Caro's world' --Daily Mail
Book Description
'Campbell's style is lyrical, revealing sharp, important truths with mesmerising intensity' Daily Mail
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Examination of Loss,
By
This review is from: The Loss Adjustor (Hardcover)
The Loss Adjustor is a beautifully written novel, its quietness and understated tone belie a great powerhouse of emotions such as passion, regret and how heavily the past weighs upon our shoulders.Caro (Caroline) Fraser spends her working life assessing the losses of others in her job as a loss adjustor. Ironically she has never addressed the major losses in her own life, the sudden death of her father when she was twelve, the emotional loss of her mother who withdraws following her husband's death, the loss of two of her closest childhood friends, Estelle and Cormac. Post-adolescence, Caro has learned to steel herself against any possible emotional attachments and she leads a solitary, bland existence as a result. However, change is on the horizon in the unlikely shape of pensioner, Tom, and his feisty jack russell, Jack who have also experienced loss but are now willing to face the past. The Loss Adjustor is an absolute delight to read, absolutely every single word counts and the use of the first person and the present tense adds to this feeling of immediacy, economy and directness. I found myself rooting for Caro to be happy, to take that risk and engage with life instead of living in the past. The author recreates the past very well, capturing the innocence of childhood, the trauma of teenage years, the ups and downs of friendships, showing how the past has moulded Caro into her present emotionally bereft state, frozen in place and haunted by the ghosts of the past. Her childhood friends, Estelle and Cormac, now absent from her life, are actually very vividly presented and you realise what a huge impact they had on her life. "I do not recall a time when I did not feel my friends' presence on either side of me. I do not remember a single moment when I experienced the solitariness that could have come with being an only child. From the earliest days I was part of both their families and wandered in and out at will." The story moves from loss to guilt and ends on a note of redemption. This is Aifric's second novel and with such engaging, elegant writing, I am sure that she will go from strength to strength with future novels.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An unexpected storyline which really captivated,
By
This review is from: The Loss Adjustor (Hardcover)
Caro has a structured life. She goes from day to day working and spending her Sundays visiting the graveyard in which her friend, Estelle, was buried twenty years ago. Her structure is thrown out when Tom, an old man who also frequents the graveyard, starts talking to her a year after they go by not speaking on their visits. Tom, accompanied by his strange dog Jack, opens Caro up to new experiences and she finds herself silently going over parts of her life.Estelle and Cormac were Caros best friends and she lost them both in the same summer. One dead, the other gone, Caro carried on through life alone. That is until Cormac contacts her out of the blue, she expects to talk like old friends, go over everything that happened and has since gone on. The Loss Adjustor really wasn't what I expected. I read it and thought that there was perhaps a mystery to be uncovered about the friendship, about Cormac, or about Estelle's death. What it was actually about came as a very nice surprise, and it was a really good read. Caro really isn't someone I can relate to, she's ordered and calculated and a bit of a loner. Her mother is the same, not moving from the kitchen of her house, just reading as many books as she can get a hold of. The family dynamics were unusual to say the least but I'm glad of how they turned out. I liked that throughout the story you had parts of Caro's personality come out but without the control that Caro usually held onto. It struck me that Caro didn't want any emotional attachment and hadn't since the loss of Estelle. When Caro goes over parts of her childhood with Estelle and Cormac it's obvious that the relationship wasn't exactly a normal one. Three isn't a good number and this is very evident in this story. It's obvious that Caro's personality comes from their friendship and what happened between them, you could see that Caro had had her heart broken, in places by the both of them. The name of the story is a highly important part of this story. Not only is Caro a loss adjustor, someone who calculates the loss of a person's insurance claim, but she is also still adjusting to the loss of her friend. I liked this link a lot and although parts of the end of the book is left for the reader to speculate I believe that it is very fitting when you take into account this link. I loved the character of Tom. He surprised me a lot because I expected the story to be completely focussed on Caro and Cormac. Tom appeared to me to be on a mission and I think he probably fulfilled that mission. I also loved the stories that her told of the war and the way Aifric told these stories really captivated me. I read a lot of young adult books and it was nice to have a break from young adult. The story line grabbed my attention when I believed it would deal with a death within friends and even though it wasn't what I expected I still got sucked into it. I thought it a little slow to start off with once I got into it, probably around the point where Tom started talking to Caro, I couldn't put the book down!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing,
By
This review is from: The Loss Adjustor (Hardcover)
Aifric Campbell's 'The Loss Adjustor' is a novel of characters, extremely absorbing and very well-written characters that together make up this remarkable novel.Caro is a loss adjustor, she spends her life dealing with people who are grieving - for lost possessions and lost loved ones. It is clear that inside, Caro is grieving too - she has suffered loss in her life and these losses have affected her whole life. Her beloved Father died when she was young and her Mother disappeared into a world of books. Caro's two childhood best friends are lost to her aswell. Estelle died many years ago and her childhood sweetheart Cormac is now a wildly successful rock star who she sees only on the television. Although Estelle is dead and Cormac only briefly appears towards the end of the novel, it is these two people that make up most of the story. Caro has never recovered from either Estelle's death or Cormac's sudden departure and has allowed these events to colour her life and her feelings for the past twenty years. It is only when Caro meets Tom and his little dog Jack that she allows any to get a glance of the real her. The scenes where Tom and Caro travel to France to visit the military graveyards are wonderfully poignant. The little terrier dog Jack almost steals the show, a fabulous characterful animal. This is not a light-hearted read, but it is a beautifully crafted story. The characters spring to life and the story is absorbing.
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