“Fiction,” says Neil Gaiman, “is the lie that tells the truth.” Brian McGilloway’s latest novel exemplifies that truth. Set in a roughly contemporary time, it is filled with references to lies and truth, trust and betrayal, as it portrays the long shadows cast by the Troubles. Not only those who were involved are affected; indeed, one of the characters in this novel was not even born when under IRA orders, three people carried out a deed that changed the courses of their lives and has haunted them ever since.

Aficionados of aromatherapy make many claims as to the virtues of this essential oil, which is distilled from the yellow flowers of a tropical tree. Considered beneficial for the skin, it also calms anxiety and depression, and functions as an aphrodisiac. These days I rarely apply perfume, but it’s a lovely feeling to open a rich vein of youthful memories by simply uncapping the bottle.

In her classroom in London, the teenage Ada, child of a Greek father and a Turkish mother from the conflicted island of Cyprus, wonders whether it is “possible to inherit something as intangible and immeasurable as sorrow.” Exiled from the warm Mediterranean climate, her widowed father tips a fig tree into a trench and buries it to ensure it survives the winter. The tree knows that “everything is interconnected…loneliness is a human invention.” The loneliness suffered by Ada and her dad after her mother’s death isolates them both, alienating them from one another.

Hope Adams was inspired to write a story about the Rajah Quilt when it was brought from the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra to be exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museuam in London in 2009.