Try to imagine, if you will, the TV series, Motherland as a foreboding psychological thriller, if it were directed by Hitchcock. In None of This Is True, Lisa Jewell seems to have made this leap to produce a 48-hour binge-read.
Affluent podcaster Alix meets the downtrodden, dispirited Josie by chance in a restaurant. The two women share a birthday. On this pretext, Josie persuades a reluctant Alix to interview her for her podcast. Their conversations prove compelling as she slowly reveals a disturbing past. In the present, Josie infiltrates Alix’s life, and it becomes clear that she has a fixation well beyond lifestyle-envy.
Similarly to Motherland, the story is set around Queen’s Park, an affluent London suburb with some rougher edges. Jewell vividly evokes the landscape, drawing the reader into the world of the novel and towards the intersection where aspiration and jealousy fatally collide.