One of the best novels I've read this year from an unusually gifted writer' IRISH TIMES'A wonderfully stylish writer with an unwavering eye' JOHN PATRICK McHUGH'Perfectly calibrated . . . These characters spike off the page' A. K. BLAKEMOREHow do you mourn someone you never really knew? Three siblings - Anna, Gemma and Matthew - will have to work that out quickly. Monday is the day of their gentle, but distant, father's funeral, and for the first time in a long while they are under one roof with their mother, imperious Yvonne, awaiting the arrival of their aunt Amy, an award-winning poet. Yet, as the funeral looms, their everyday concerns refuse to diminish: will newly sex-obsessed Gemma work out what she wants from life, beyond her mother's expectations? Can Anna maintain the fine balance between desire and nonchalance with her not-quite-exclusive boyfriend back in London? Will Amy's past explode the relationships of the present? And, crucially, will Yvonne pull off her grand, post-funeral family dinner, the solution to what she fears may be an unsolvable problem? Told from five perspectives, into the wreck worries at the knotty complexities of one family's bonds, written with Susannah Dickey's trademark empathy and wit. 'A rare talent, and certainly one to watch' SUNDAY TIMES'One of literature's major new talents' OBSERVER'One of the funniest and most insightful novelists writing today' NELL FRIZZELL
