Lorna Parry lives with her three sons, each one lurching uncomfortably into adulthood. In the claustrophobic loneliness of her own home, Lorna orbits around her sons and struggles to talk to them; she's still angry at her ex-husband, uncomfortable around her father's new girlfriend, and works quietly as the only employee left in a deserted London archive. Life seems precariously balanced. Then a shocking and unexpected event occurs in the stationery cupboard at the boys' school and her fragile world starts to unravel. Orange-Prize-longlisted Janet Davey returns with a taut new novel about the fault lines in family relationships. Praised for her peerless prose, Davey's portrait of modern London life is a masterful study in rendering the everyday beautiful and surprising.

Author Biography

Janet Davey was born in 1953. She is the author of English Correspondence, which was longlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize, First Aid, The Taxi Queue and By Battersea Bridge.