It depicts Tony, his wife Helen and daughter Laura travelling to their holiday home in Maine and encountering the evil Ray and his friends. The opening section of Edward’s book is quite simply, terrifying. I love a book within a book, and loved the frustration and anticipation of wanting to know what happened next in Tony’s story and being unable to do so as we have to read at Susan’s pace. Then we have Edward’s manuscript which is the story of Tony and the life changing events that he encounters. Firstly we have Susan who has been sent a copy of a manuscript by her ex-husband Edward and throughout the course of the novel we learn about her life with Edward, their subsequent divorce and her life now.

Nocturnal Animals is a book within a book. Nocturnal Animals was a hit movie which was released towards the end of last year starring Jake Gyllenhaal who, lets face it, never does light-hearted rom-coms so I was expecting the novel of the same name to be dark and twisted and boy was I right! The book was originally released in 1993 as Tony and Susan and was a critical success, it was re-released last year as Nocturnal Animals to tie in with the film and was our book club read for April. As the Hastings’ ordinary, civilized lives are disastrously, violently sent off course, Susan is plunged back into the past, forced to confront the darkness that inhabits her and driven to name the fear that gnaws at her future and will change her life. He writes asking her to read the book she was always his best critic, he says.Īs Susan reads, she’s drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a math professor driving his family to their summer-house in Maine, and as we read with her, we too become lost in Sheffield’s thriller.

Now, she’s enduring middle class suburbia as a doctor’s wife, when out of the blue she receives a package containing the manuscript of her ex-husband’s first novel. Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband, Edward Sheffield, an unpublished writer.

Tony & susan austin wright