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Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781853816000

Price: £9.99

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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Secrets and lies linger in the very walls of the solid old Normandy house where Therèse and Leonie, French and English cousins, grow up after the war. Intrigued by adults’ guilty silences and the broken shrine they find in the woods, the girls weave their own fantasies, unwittingly revealing the village’s buried shame, a shame that will haunt them both for the rest of their lives.

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Reviews

Subtle and persuasive
COSMOPOLITAN
An intense piece of writing, in which the transfigured mundane world of recipes, parental prohibitions and almost ritualised gossip is posed against official purity and religiosity, and shown to be superior.
TLS
Remarkable and beautifully written
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
A brave and richly imagined novel, full of thrilling set pieces. The new prestige it seems likely to earn for one of our best writers is long overdue.
GUARDIAN