Author:Anna Ralph
They say it's coming back. Before long the moon will find a shadow under the lake. Bubbles will rise and the shadow will spread to a stain. Then, in the night, in the dark, the floating island will surface. Here again. As it was a year ago. The day Tom died.
It's almost a year since fifteen-year-old Matt and his younger brother, Tom, rowed out to the island. Matt, confined to a wheelchair and haunted by nightmares, can't remember what happened. Nor does he want to.
Only when Sarah Bell, a tough, Geordie girl with a no-nonsense approach, takes up the newly vacant position of Matt's carer, do things begin to change for him. At first, resentful of her presence, he tries to drive her away, but she isn't like the other carers. She isn't like anyone he's ever met.
Sarah's attention meanwhile, is focussed on Robert, Matt's psychiatrist. Mature, attractive and a world away from everything she knows, he seems to be exactly what she needs. But Robert, highly skilled at solving other people's problems, is struggling to deal with his own.
As the floating island returns to the surface of the lake, Robert forces Matt to confront the truth about his brother's death, but also, unknowingly, exposes him to an adult world of passion, guilt, and betrayal...
Anna Ralph's debut novel is moving, astute and arrestingly readable. I couldn't put it down.
—— Miranda SeymourStrong and evocative, with a rewarding depth of emotion ... a direct, sensuous feel which I liked very much; it has a touch of D.H. Lawrence about it. I felt as if I was standing - or sinking - on that floating island.
—— Helen DunmoreA straightforward, frankly sensual debut that explores dependency, responsibility, guilt and desire with assured clarity
—— GuardianCompassionate and beautifully written
—— Woman & HomeIn making fiction out of the excesses of his Puritan ancestors, Hawthorne anticipated the technique of a modern movie-director. He was a master of crowd scenes
—— Financial Times[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy
—— Malcolm CowleyA genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting
—— Alan AyckbournWitty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny
—— Arabella WeirThe Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon
—— Kathy LetteThe funniest writer ever to put words to paper
—— Hugh LaurieThe greatest comic writer ever
—— Douglas AdamsP.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century
—— Sebastian FaulksSublime comic genius
—— Ben EltonYou don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour
—— Stephen FryWodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in
—— Evelyn WaughLovely
—— Daily TelegraphMoving and intelligent
—— IndependentMagnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners
—— CosmopolitanJewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction
—— GlamourFans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into
—— Sunday Telegraph
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