I did not expect to be this taken with it. The chapters jump about so it reads scattered at first, but every thread ties back and the last forty pages land beautifully. It took me a fortnight and I am glad I stayed with it. The story moves between three winters on the

Opens strong and then loses its nerve. An ambitious marsh-country gothic, no question, but heavily uneven, especially where it reaches for the folklore of the fen villages; and at times the long descriptions of the floods felt decorative rather than