Family is everything, even when it falls apart.
Discover the brand-new novel from the multi-million-copy bestselling author.

‘It made me laugh, it made me cry and I couldnt put it down. If you are a fan of Maggie OFarrell you must read this.’– Louise Minchin, TV presenter and author ofIsolation Island

‘Rachel Joyce is a masterful storyteller.‘ – Sarah Winman, author ofStill Life

The renowned artist – the emotionally starved children – what an inspired subject! Joyce writes with her trademark vitality and compassion and there is such colour here. So much at stake. I couldnt put it down.– Esther Freud, author ofHideous KinkyandMr Mac and Me

‘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 ofA Place Called Winter
‘Sparkling and addictive Rachel Joyce is so incredibly good and wise on families and siblings. I couldnt love it more.’– Harriet Evans, author ofThe Garden of Lost and Found

A triumph of insight and empathy!– Clare Chambers, author ofSmall Pleasures

‘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.

Although 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.