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Summer
On sale
17th January 2013
Price: £8.99
They have lost everything but each other.
When Grace Hooper, on the verge of womanhood, and her nine-year-old brother Billy are left orphaned by a freak accident at the beginning of a long, hot summer, they find themselves cast adrift from their old life and numb with grief. Sent to stay with their estranged grandfather on the remote farm where their mother grew up, there they must try and uncover a new understanding of the world and their place in it. But in the relentless heat and the unnatural calm of the near-deserted farm, nature itself soon becomes both enemy and ally – and as the bond between brother and sister disintegrates, Grace discovers that the farm hosts a tragic past and an uncertain future.
At once disturbing and compelling, Summer is a beautifully written and deeply atmospheric exploration of loss and regeneration.
When Grace Hooper, on the verge of womanhood, and her nine-year-old brother Billy are left orphaned by a freak accident at the beginning of a long, hot summer, they find themselves cast adrift from their old life and numb with grief. Sent to stay with their estranged grandfather on the remote farm where their mother grew up, there they must try and uncover a new understanding of the world and their place in it. But in the relentless heat and the unnatural calm of the near-deserted farm, nature itself soon becomes both enemy and ally – and as the bond between brother and sister disintegrates, Grace discovers that the farm hosts a tragic past and an uncertain future.
At once disturbing and compelling, Summer is a beautifully written and deeply atmospheric exploration of loss and regeneration.
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Reviews
Tom Darling's thoughtful second novel leads the reader into a terrain of trauma, beyond the urban world's amenities...Summer...stands as a deeply felt parable about children who fall outside the social net.
Nature is always ready to turn nasty in Darling's twisted pastoral tale of two children stranded on a remote English farm after the death of their parents...As their grandfather sinks ever further into solitary nightmares of burning cattle, Grace and (especially) Billy run wild. Darling chronicles their slow descent towards a state of nature and their eventual rescue from it in exact and compellingly sensuous prose.
Summer is a magnificent and spellbinding novel; emotional, powerful, intense and undeniably stirring and deserves lavish acclaim.