James and his French wife Sabine hire a remote villa in the Dordogne for a holiday with their two children Jessie and Beth and friends Matt, Chrissie and Rachel. The house, and its surrounding landscape, are beautiful with fields of sunflowers and corn and the local caves are mysterious and strange. The holiday should be idyllic, but the friends are mismatched and James’ arrogant behaviour soon causes friction. As the days progress, Jessie, who already suffers from unpredictable emotions, becomes ever more impulsive and erratic. Sabine begins to suspect that Jessie’s mind is being poisoned by a member of the party who is filling her daughter with strange, magical ideas and stealing her away. As Sabine tries to identify the culprit, tensions in the group increase and the storm clouds gather. The cracks in the group begin to widen and civility gives way to anger, revealing painful secrets with tragic consequences.This remarkable, fine and almost unclassifiable book is a complete breath of fresh air’. Goodreads
‘Stormy emotions and turbulent revelations charge the tense atmosphere of this cunning exercise in magic realism’. Publishers Weekly
A powerhouse of a novel, calling to mind the work and styles of D. H. Lawrence and Graham Swift and the downbeat mysteries and the human flotsam and jetsam characters from the likes of Barbara Vine. Work of this stature and calibre that can only bode well for the future – both Joyce’s and that of the entire field – and I commend it to you unreservedly’. Interzone
‘A taut psychological thriller’. Library Thing
‘My awe for Graham Joyce is growing by the book’. Amazon
