A marshmallow is a common confectionery, white and pink, made of gelatin, sugar, and water. We put them in hot chocolate, toast them over campfires. Marshmallow is also a plant, Althea officinalis, containing a jelly-like substance which has been used for medicinal purposes as far back as the time of Ancient Egypt. A marshmallow can also describe someone who is soft to a fault, even vulnerable. That there might be anything approaching complexity linked to this word is unlikely, but by the end of Victoria Hannan’s second novel, Marshmallow (Hachette, $29.99 pb, 292 pp), it is obvious that something as apparently innocuous as that confectionery and medicinal ingredient can have many implications; the intriguing title is an early indication that much will be going on, none of it straightforward.

Five close friends are approaching the first anniversary of a devastating event, what should be the third birthday of a child who has died. As this is clear upfront in the novel – as early as page fifteen – the mystery at the heart of the story is not that this happened, but how it happened and, more importantly, why not only the child’s parents but also the other three friends feel as implicated, indeed as guilty, as they do. 

In contrast with Kokomo (2020), Hannan’s acclaimed first novel, Marshmallow is a slow burn. Readers who relished the former’s audacious beginning may need to be more patient as the author gradually folds together the intersecting lives of her characters and begins to scatter hints regarding the story’s central crisis.  Softened, too, is the sharp wit which, while exhilarating in that first novel, might have been hard to sustain, and risk sounding facile. Set over two days and tightly structured, Marshmallow offers a somewhat more restrained tone and is the better for it. In any case, the subject matter here demands a sober approach.