These three characters drift in and out of the narrative in a rather fragmented way and, when the young woman's identity is eventually discovered, it happens through a very odd coincidence which I found hard to believe. This structure (sort of a hub, spoke, wheel approach) makes for a LOT of characters and a lot of subplots. Then we find migrants from the Commonwealth and semi-recent conflict zones - Iran after the fall of the Shah. And despite its contemporary relevance, the novel avoids becoming a “state of the nation” tract – it’s far too emotionally intelligent for that. I even enjoyed the surreal/fantastic element of the island accessible by a secret tunnel/house and the peculiar persons living there.

Next we meet a producer of television documentaries; he and the policeman discuss the idea of making a programme about the woman.Contrast this with an England that seems to be retreating into itself, harking after the glory days of an Empire, capital punishment and boiled cabbage. Grant brings together a diverse group of people who initially meet in response to the discovery of an unidentified woman’s body in the Thames.

There are moments of brilliance, and the book definitely captures aspects of what London offers, good and bad. It’s a panoramic, sometimes discursive account of contemporary London – a city of strangers – and while the shadow of Brexit and its accompanying pervasive anxiety – the city becoming stranger – hangs over the story, it manages to use the B word only once.I found this a very engaging read that I would expect to be very popular with book groups given its scope for discussion. Linda Grant's literary novel turns a mysterious death into a post Brexit rumination on the state of the nation and a celebration of London's cultural diversity. I enjoyed the book and Grant's prose are good, but I was not as gripped as I might have been and I felt the story flagged in a couple of places. In the novel, the young woman becomes Chrissie, an Irish nurse who coincidentally goes briefly missing at the same time as the unidentified woman ends her life jumping from London Bridge, and becomes something of a calm centre connecting a disparate cast list of modern Londoners. For me, the London thing has been done to death (and I live in London), Ali Smith, Jonathan Coe and others have written novels about Britain and Brexit and I just got bored with A Stranger City.

London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. Brexit Britain is explored through the brilliant connectivity of seemingly unrelated characters - each facing their own difficulties, aspirations and regrets - whose stories are synchronised by the discovery of an unidentified body.Then it concerns itself with exaggerated racial tensions: acid attacks, people avoiding going out, other leaving London to go back home, deportations.