Anstruther’s debut centers on a shocking truth from her family history. Her paternal grandmother Enid Campbell, descendant of the Earls of Argyll, sold her younger son Ian to her sister for £500, following Enid’s divorce and bitter custody battle. Having received her father’s permission to tell his story, and infusing it with details from public court records and private sources, the author brings us into her characters’ thoughts with unvarnished candor and lays bare their flaws alongside the burdens and cruelties of aristocratic life. The novel volleys between the 1920s and 1964, with Enid in a Hampstead nursing home before a prospective family reunion with her daughter and Ian, who she hasn’t seen since she gave him up 25 years earlier. Here she ponders a “perfect explanation” for her life choices, some of which were outside her control.

Emotionally cold, Enid is impossible to like, which makes being within her head uncomfortable. However, as we learn about the context behind her terrible decisions, we come to deeply empathize. After her older brother’s death at Gallipoli, and her sister Joan a confirmed “spinster” (who lived with her lesbian partner), Enid’s mother pushes her to provide an heir. Married to Douglas Anstruther, a man she comes to detest, Enid produces a boy and a girl, but her son Fagus’s physical challenges make him a deficient option in their view, and she feels pressured to try again. Enraptured by religion, particularly Christian Science, Enid never wanted to marry or be a mother; the inside perspective of her descent into postpartum depression, which spurs her to abandon her family, feels wrenching. We also experience the views of Finetta, Enid’s daughter, yet another victim of a broken system that neglects its female children’s mental health and values money above all. This eye-opening novel is moving and psychologically shrewd throughout.

If you're tired of formulaic historical fiction, "A Perfect Explanation" is the read for you. Based on real-life events, the novel imagines a toxic family drama through the eyes of multiple players. The word "toxic" would normally put me off reading a book, so to be clear: What's so incredible about the book is how you can be revolted by the characters and yet fully sympathetic to them. In short, to feel the pains and truths of real people. While the author states in the afterward that the book is based on family stories and documents, don't let her undersell her own literary power here in recreating life-long family drama.

What's good:
•The villains and the heroes are the same. This doesn't cancel out your feeling for the characters; you still want them to succeed, even while being horrified by some of their actions.
•This is not a thriller, but it is still not easily predictable.
•While the book's plot is the selling point here, you still walk away pondering deeper thoughts about women and their roles in creating family networks.

What's iffier:
•This isn't a warm and fuzzy book. You will feel sad during and after it.

(Note: This review is based on an ARC given to me by Netgalley.)