★★★
When William Golding died in 1993, he was in the middle of working on a new novel, which was left unfinished. At an advanced draft stage, it told the story of a young woman plucked from her miserable family life and offered the chance of a new existence at the ritual site of Delphi, where she becomes a servant of the god Apollo and, later, the mouthpiece for his words. The story was in good shape and so Golding’s editors and executors decided to publish it – and it became The Double Tongue. That title is apparently only one of those which Golding had tried out on the top of the manuscript, but it’s a very fitting name for a book which is all about the duplicity and sleight-of-hand that accompany the act of prophecy.
The Idle Woman 