At an age when most of her peers have careers, families and the other trappings of adult life, Zander's 28-year-old narrator Suki Piper is still drifting.
Returning to London after a decade in New Zealand, she hopes to settle in the city in which she grew up, only to find that with no family or friends, and her identity purged from the health system and tax databases, she has no place there. The only things that remain are the phantoms from her childhood and a recurring dream involving the abandoned World War 2 air-raid shelter in the backyard of her parents' apartment.
It is difficult to replace the magical thinking of youth with the realism required to live in the adult world when one grows up, and Suki soon realises she needs to reach back through time to her younger self to lay these ghosts to rest before she can find her place in the world.
The juxtaposition of Suki's journey through the shadows of memory and her daily struggle with the hard edges of present-day reality create a story that is by turns sad, grim and fantastic.
I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed The Girl Below, my response was more complicated than that; but it was certainly a satisfying and thought-provoking read. It would not be to everybody's taste, but I recommend it to those who enjoy the idiosyncratic weirdness of writers such as Haruki Murakami and Audrey Niffenegger.
Zander is a writer to watch.
• Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
