An Observer Best Debut of the YearA Granta Best Young British Novelist-I loved this book- JULIA ARMFIELD-Exhilarating- MONICA HEISEY''Astonishing'' ANDREA LAWLOR''Should be on everyone''s summer reading list'' iNEWSA powerful, sensual novel of the forbidden love between a young woman and the headmaster-s wife, unfolding across a single a heatwave summer.In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of -matron-. There she meets Mrs S, the headmaster-s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into the older woman-s world with their unspoken desire blooming into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both know that a choice must finally be made.-Atmospheric and
