Difficult to love a novel when you find the characters in it so selfish and pathetic you want to wring their necks. Such is the case with The Poison Tree, Erin Kelly’s first novel, in which the solidly middle class protagonist Karen becomes inexplicably enthralled with the needy, hopeless, manipulative and unfortunately named Biba and, later, her doormat of a brother, Rex. When Biba kills two people, Rex takes the blame and everyone’s lives spiral out of control until Karen takes charge again, allowing Biba to get away with murder both figuratively and literally. You may, like me, be silently cheering at Karen’s final encounter with Biba. It’s a pretty good debut in terms of plot but Kelly’s later novel He Said She Said is so much better.
