Family is everything, even when it falls apart: discover the brand-new novel from the multi-million-copy bestselling author. Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett and Maggie O'Farrell.

'Full of suspense and intrigue, this unputdownable novel is a gear change for the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.' The Bookseller

'Lyrical, shrewd and, ultimately, as indecently satisfying as a four course Italian lunch. My life is a little emptier now it's over.' - Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter
Sparkling and addictive … Rachel Joyce is so incredibly good and wise on families and siblings. I couldn’t love it more.' - Harriet Evans, author of The Garden of Lost and Found


‘This terrific novel absolutely refuses to be cosy and provides all sorts of misdirections and a sense of foreboding throughout. A triumph of insight and empathy!’ - Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
'Rachel Joyce is a masterful storyteller.' - Sarah Winman, Sunday Times bestselling author of Still Life

'Joyce is a fearless explorer of emotional landscape.' – Sunday Times

'If only there were more novelists like Rachel Joyce' – Telegraph

There is a heatwave across Europe.

Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting.

Alhough the siblings have always been close, as they search for answers over that summer, the things they learn - about themselves, their father and their new stepmother - will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.

Extraordinarily compelling, at heart this is a novel about sibling relationships and those hairline cracks that can appear within a family: what what happens when they splinter, and what it would take to mend them.