By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize - an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence
-Groundwater masterfully and subtly begins to re-enchant all that we have reduced- Amber Husain
John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz-s sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.
Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid - between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house - and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.
As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden - and the summer builds to it
