The plot of Relativity unravels in satisfying increments. In part, Ethan’s unique perspectiveresulted from an injury he sustained as a baby. Claire has kept the true reason for Mark’s absence secret to protect him from a terrible truth.

In the first half of Relativity, there are creaky moments. The writing is overloaded with details that pull no narrative weight or that jar alongside otherwise intelligent prose. When Claire re-encounters intimacy, for example, Hayes writes, ‘she’d forgotten what it felt like to be electrocuted’. But in the second half the plot ratchets up and the writing complements the seamless narrative pace.

Hayes manages the shifts in perspective between Claire, Mark, and Ethan elegantly; the threads fold back on themselves to offer us different characters’s perspectives of the same event. In a book predicated on misunderstandings and secrets, this structure shows us not just the how but the why of the disintegration of family ties. It is Hayes’s capacity to generate empathy for the perpetrator of an unspeakable crime that is this novel’s overwhelming achievement.