LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

The new novel by Charlotte Wood, the Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and the complicated beauty of female friendship.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of her new life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town, turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.

'Both profound and addictively entertaining. I loved it'
CLARE CHAMBERS, bestselling author of Small Pleasures

'Beautiful, strange and otherworldly'
PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of A Slow Fire Burning

'Subtly powerful and utterly engrossing'
CLAIRE FULLER, bestselling author of Unsettled Ground