Unsettled Ground
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Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021
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Claire Fuller
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Rachel Bavidge (Read by)
Brought to you by Penguin.
What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant?
What would you do to get it back?
Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.
But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world, even as their mother's secrets begin to unravel, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.
Unsettled Ground is a heart-stopping novel of betrayal and resilience, love and survival. It is a portrait of life on the fringes of society that explores with dazzling emotional power how we can build our lives on broken foundations, and spin light from darkness.
PRAISE FOR CLAIRE FULLER
'So sharply, so utterly brilliant that I found myself holding my breath while reading it, dazzled by Fuller's mastery and precision' LAUREN GROFF, author of Fates and Furies
'Extraordinary, gripping. Fuller writes with a singing simplicity that finds beauty amid the terror' Sunday Times
'A compulsive page-turner. Fuller creates an atmosphere of simmering menace with all the assurance of a latter-day Daphne du Maurier' The Times
'Bewitching, otherworldly, full of dark foreboding. Claire Fuller is a dazzling storyteller' Scotsman
© Claire Fuller 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
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Imprint: Penguin
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Published: 25/03/2021
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ISBN: 9780241993132
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Length: 570 Minutes
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RRP: £13.00
Reviews
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Her strongest yet... a powerful, beautiful novel that shows us our land as it really is: a place of shelter and cruelty, innocence and experience
The Times
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Dark, brilliantly observed and ultimately a tale of love winning the day.
The Sunday Telegraph
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An intriguing, moving novel that will make you question assumptions you have about modern life
Tracy Chevalier, author of 'A Single Thread'
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Superb...deservedly longlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction
Daily Mail
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So sharply, so utterly brilliant that I found myself holding my breath while reading it, dazzled by Fuller's mastery and precision.
Lauren Groff, author of 'Fates and Furies'
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With sensitivity and intelligence, Fuller unpicks the relentless complexity of the modern world
The Guardian
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Fuller is excellent at description, and capturing the twins' awkward interactions with the world. The fate of the illiterate and weak-hearted Jeanie once she loses everything that is safe is particularly unsettling
The Sunday Times
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It's merciless in its observation of casual cruelty and merciful in its observation of casual kindness and family love
Richard Curtis
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Unsettled Ground is another sly psychological treat from Claire Fuller, who just keeps on getting better with each book
Laline Paull
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These memorable characters will worm their way into your head and heart and the descriptions of the landscape are beautiful.
Jo Finney, Good Housekeeping
