GROUNDWATER

By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family secrets and violence Complex and chilling FINANCIAL TIMES Masterful uncanny and unsettling SOPHIE MACKINTOSH A disquieting study in estrangement IRISH TIMES John and Liz have left the city to move to a remote house on the shores of a lake But along with the boxes they have brought their trouble with them They find the new house already haunted by their old disappointments and longing Though the house is barely unpacked Liz s sister with her children and husband have come to visit Over the course of a hot slow week tensions simmer things go unsaid And as outsiders descend on the house the atmosphere grows claustrophobic the pressure near unbearable As summer draws to a close and their family is thrown into crisis John and Liz must confront what it means to belong to a place and to each other What animates the novel is a series of tensions between material stability and emotional turmoil idealism and conformity speech and silence love in the abstract and love in practice between a life and the life TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A finely drawn portrait not only of a couple in crisis but of a world on the verge of disaster McMullan writes