Virtuoso storyteller Helen Dunmore returns with a thrilling Cold War espionage tale in which the closest ties are called into question and nobody is quite who they seem. It's London, 1960. The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbor, colleague or lover. Two colleagues, Giles Holloway and Simon Callington, face a terrible dilemma over a missing top-secret file. At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, Simon's wife, Lily, buries a briefcase containing the file deep in the earth. She believes that in doing so she is protecting her family. What she will learn is that no one is immune from betrayal or the devastating consequences of exposure.
"Dunmore has always been fantastic on the complexity of people's motivations and the secret reasons they act as they do. This book is no exception… This may be an unconventional thriller, but it's still a page turner for that… As the narrative unfolds we realize that this is the novel's beating heart: It's as much a surprising love story as it is a tale of spies."
Kate Hamer, New York Times Book Review
"Dunmore's strategy, placing a triangle of past and present loves within a spy novel, yields an unexpected dividend. Even the most ordinary elements of life - the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her children, meeting someone special, what remains unsaid within a marriage - become viscerally exciting."
New Yorker
"Much like a slick, shape-shifting spook, Exposure is many things at once - an espionage thriller, a forbidden-love story, an immigrant's tale - and it assumes these varied identities with confidence . . . [it is] a novel you won't be able to shake."
