“The Names” ~ by Florence Knapp

What’s in a name? A person’s name sometimes seems indissolubly linked to their very identity, so that even the sound of a name evokes memories long after we have lost touch with the person who bears it. Florence Knapp’s debut novel The Names follows three alternative parallel storylines over the same 35 years, exploring how one boy’s life evolves differently depending on the name he is given at birth.

Cora is the mother of a new baby boy and, on her way to the register his birth, is deciding what to call him. Her controlling husband Gordon thinks they have agreed on his own name. Her first child Maia wants to call him Bear – “all soft and cuddly and kind… but also, brave and strong”. Cora herself is considering Julian “which is sky father” as a way to avoid the name Gordon but placate his father anyway. We quickly realise that either Bear or Julian would be unacceptable to Cora’s husband, and share her trepidation as she goes home to tell him their son’s name. As each decision is made, a different chain of events unfolds. We follow Bear/Gordon/Julian as he grows from a boy into a man, seeing the impact each name has on his development and observing the competing influences of personality and name on his whole person.

Knapp skilfully encourages the reader to share Cora’s fear and rebellion as she makes each of her decisions, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. The novel shines a light on Cora’s life behind closed doors, showing how respectability can so easily be fabricated to the outside, and how brutally that world can be torn apart.

Despite touching on dark themes of domestic violence and murder, the overall story is about hope: The hope that someone can be more than their past or the shadow of their family, and the realisation that we all affect, and are affected by, those around us. The Names explores how much we are subject to decisions made for us, and the extent to which we can choose to change.

This review was first published in July 2026 by The Local Answer.