Groundwater: ‘Complex, chilling, masterful' Financial Times

<p><b>By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize – an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence</b><br><br><b>‘Complex and chilling’ <i>FINANCIAL TIMES</i></b><br><b>‘Masterful – uncanny and unsettling’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH</b><br><b>‘A disquieting study in estrangement’ <i>IRISH TIMES</i></b><br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><b>''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’ <i>TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT</i></b><br><b><br>‘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<i>’ FINANCIAL TIMES</i></b><br><b><br>''A masterclass in apprehension, exposing the fissures between an imagined life and its reality with stealthy power, and boldly upending reader expectations. Richly unsettling’ <i>DAILY MAIL</i></b></p>

Book details

• Publication date: 13 August 2026
• Page count: 304
• Dimensions: Height 197 mm; Width 129 mm; Thickness 21 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN-13: 9781526678003