Super Short Summary

Exposure by Helen Dunmore is a 2016 spy novel set during the Cold War in 1960 London, involving the Callington family, led by Simon and Lily, whose lives are upended after becoming unintentionally involved in an espionage plot. Simon, a civil servant, gets entangled in a blackmail scheme, while Lily, a Jewish refugee with a secret past, confronts paranoia and fears resurgence of wartime traumas. Themes include espionage, identity, marginalization, and societal suspicion. Themes of anti-Semitism, wartime trauma, and the criminalization of homosexuality are present.