An Actor Prepares

'I wanted us to wake to a kingdom of ice where our breath would turn to icicles as it left our lips, and we would walk through tunnels of snow to the outhouses and find birds fallen dead from the air . . .'

In the years just before World War One, Cathy and her brother Rob find themselves living alone in a decaying English mansion with their distant, stern grandfather. Abandoned by their mother while their distraught father is confined to an asylum, they roam the grounds freely with little understanding of trespass. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross. But they are not so separate from the outside, nor as alone, as they believe . . .

The inaugural winner of the Orange Prize

'Written so seductively that passages sing out from the page' Sunday Times