Elsewhere

Summary

A psychologically gripping novel of estranged sisters, deep secrets, and tense twists from “an elegant and thrilling new voice,” (Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals).

At the height of summer, two sisters reunite at a remote cottage. They’ve long been distant from each other, literally as well as emotionally: Anna is a free-spirited wanderer and Catherine is career-focused and settled in one place. So, some tension is not surprising, but it rapidly escalates when odd things start happening during the all-night twilight on the wild peninsula.

Who’s the watchful girl with a baby and what does she want from the sisters? Who bangs on their windows in the early hours then disappears into the woods? What does the sad-eyed Scottish man Anna is falling for know about it all? And how does it link back to an event twenty years ago that the sisters never talk about—the incident that created all this confusion, dislocation, and longing in the first place?

This suspenseful, knowing novel explores how psychosis creeps in on the back of isolation and suspicion; the shadow that motherhood casts over women’s lives, even when there is no child; and how buried trauma always winds its way up to the surface—sometimes in the strangest and most frightening ways.