Groundwater

By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize – an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence

"Complex and chilling" — Financial Times

"Masterful – uncanny and unsettling" — Sophie Mackintosh

"A disquieting study in estrangement" — Irish Times

John and Liz have left the city to move to a remote house on the shores of a lake. But along with the boxes, they have brought their trouble with them. They find the new house already haunted – by their old disappointments and longing.

Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz's sister, with her children and husband, have come to visit. Over the course of a hot, slow week, tensions simmer; things go unsaid. And as outsiders descend on the house the atmosphere grows claustrophobic, the pressure near unbearable.

As summer draws to a close, and their family is thrown into crisis, John and Liz must confront what it means to belong to a place – and to each other.

"What animates the novel is a series of tensions: between material stability and emotional turmoil; idealism and conformity; speech and silence; love in the abstract and love in practice; between a life and the life" — Times Literary Supplement

"A finely drawn portrait not only of a couple in crisis, but of a world on the verge of disaster ... McMullan writes with a masterful naturalism" — Financial Times

"A masterclass in apprehension, exposing the fissures between an imagined life and its reality with stealthy power, and boldly upending reader expectations. Richly unsettling" — Daily Mail