By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize – an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence
‘A ruthless and minutely observed reckoning with the stories, beliefs, and places we make to shelter from fear of death … Groundwater masterfully and subtly begins to re-enchant all that we have reduced’ Amber Husain
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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 its harrowing climax.
Taut and menacing, full of disquiet and tenderness, Groundwater is about the gulfs that lies between us and those we love – and the miraculous ways our deepest desires and fears manifest.
- ISBN10 1526678020
- ISBN13 9781526678027
- Publish Date 17 July 2025
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English