I often write here about books written in the past, usually because I have come back to them after a while. This one, published last month (12 February 2026), is hot off the press and one of the most engaging new books I’ve read in ages.
Tess and Theo are the children of a Cambridge academic and a French mother who grew up up in the 1930s. They are twins and one of the things this novel does very well is to explore the relationship between siblings who’ve been side by side since conception. That bonding is close, exclusive and almost impossible for outsiders to understand.
When they reach their late teens, Tess goes to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. There she gets in with an arty Left Bank crowd. Pregnancy follows (although the situation isn’t quite what Inglis Hall would, for a long time, have you believe) and her mother arrives in Paris to take charge. The baby is forcibly adopted which damages Tessa for life. Her mother insists that the “shameful” birth be kept secret even from Theo. This happens early in the novel.
Theo meanwhile joins the RAF – to the consternation of his family – and sees appalling atrocities so he too has secrets, not least that he isn’t interested in women. He is permanently scarred by seeing a fellow pilot, with whom he was falling in love, shot down during D-Day. Each twin knows that things are being hidden. Meanwhile Tessa, who has taken a menial war-effort clerical job, is recruited to do something more challenging and very secret so of course she can’t discuss it with Theo. And that feels painful.
Inglis Hall unwinds and develops all this in alternating third person chapters as the narrative switches between Theo and Tess and – no spoilers – it is highly relevant that both speak fluent French because it is their mother’s first language. We pass through the war, with tantalising flashbacks and in 1947 Theo, a lawyer, by profession, is involved with the Nuremberg Trials.
Eventually we shunt forward to 2003. Enter a PhD student named Edie, who is interested in English women posted behind enemy lines during the war. Much of the detail has long been hushed up although there’s a lot of information in the Imperial War Museum. She calls on the elderly Theo, becomes a friend, and together they eventually unravel the truth.
At one level The Shock of the Light is a gripping suspense story because Inglis Hall is brilliant at plot twists and we long to know what really happened. At another level this is a tragic, richly compelling story about human suffering and loss. And once of the things I admire most about it is the quality of research and the accuracy of the historical details. The characterisation is a treat too. Each of these people marches off the page and into your head – even the more minor players such as Theo’s “friend” Jeremy, the inscrutable Miss Jones and Tess and Theo’s pacifist father. It all got right under my skin.
Lori Inglis Hall is a 40 something Brit and this, astonishingly, is her first novel. I’m not surprised to learn than that there was a six-way auction between publishing houses wanting the right to publish. I hope there’s another one coming very soon.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: When the Cranes Fly South by Liza Ridzen
