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

“Sharp, absorbing, emotionally intelligent” - Guardian

“Rachel Joyce is a masterful storyteller.” - Sarah Winman, author of Still Life

“The perfect holiday read” - The Times

“A triumph of insight and empathy!” - Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

“Deeply satisfying” - Observer

“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 happens when they splinter, and what it would take to mend them.

“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 couldn’t put it down.” - Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky and Mr 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 of A Place Called Winter

“Sparkling and addictive … Rachel Joyce is so incredibly good and wise on families and siblings. I couldn’t love it more.” - Harriet Evans, author of The Garden of Lost and Found

Pages: 400, Dimensions: 12.7x12.7cm