The Standing Pool

Description

A thrilling novel - from the author of Ulverton and Between Each Breath - about an English family out of their depth in the wilds of rural France. Two Cambridge academics, the historians Nick and Sarah Mallinson, take a sabbatical with their three small and lively girls in a remote Languedoc farmhouse. But the farmhouse contains its own histories, far darker and murkier than the Mallinsons are used to dealing with. As the illusion of Eden retreats, the couple begin to feel the vulnerability of being among strangers...

Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel, Ulverton, appeared in 1992, and he has published two books of stories and six poetry collections and nine further novels, most recently Flight (2012). www.adamthorpe.net

Superior novel...wincingly precise in his imagery and technically adept... An electric and darkly gleeful read * Daily Mail * An immensely clever, tragicomic novel...a rich meditation on past and present colonial politics... What resonates for me is what I greatly admire in all Thorpe's work: the complex depth, and the texture and poetry of his storytelling language * Financial Times * An intimate depiction of family life... Vivid and luminous * Independent on Sunday * Because this is Adam Thorpe, there are only two things you know for certain: that the writing will be gorgeous, silky-smooth; and that the plot will be entirely original, defying categorisation...enjoy * Sunday Telegraph * An intricate fiction which reminds us gently that war wrecks lives in ways too tangled to anticipate * Times Literary Supplement *