Family is everything, even when it falls apart.
Discover the brand-new novel from the multi-million-copy bestselling author.
'It made me laugh, it made me cry and I couldn't put it down. If you are a fan of Maggie O'Farrell you must read this.' - Louise Minchin, TV presenter and author of Isolation Island
'Rachel Joyce is a masterful storyteller.' - Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
'The renowned artist - the emotionally starved children - what an inspired subject! Joyce writes with her trademark vitality and compassion and there is such colour here. So much at stake. I couldn't put it down.' - Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky and Mr Mac and Me
'Lyrical, shrewd and, ultimately, as indecently satisfying as a four course Italian lunch. My life is a little emptier now it's over.' - Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter
'Sparkling and addictive ... Rachel Joyce is so incredibly good and wise on families and siblings. I couldn't love it more.' - Harriet Evans, author of The Garden of Lost and Found
'A triumph of insight and empathy!' - Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
'Joyce is a fearless explorer of emotional landscape.' - Sunday Times
'If only there were more novelists like Rachel Joyce' - Telegraph
There is a heatwave across Europe.
Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting.
Although the siblings have always been close, as they search for answers over that summer, the things they learn - about themselves, their father and their new stepmother - will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.
Extraordinarily compelling, at heart this is a novel about sibling relationships and those hairline cracks that can appear within a family: what what happens when they splinter, and what it would take to mend them.



![Smith, Alexander Mccall FICTION PAPERBACK Alexander McCall Smith: A Conspiracy Of Friends [2012]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/smith-alexander-mccall-alexander-mccall-smith-a-conspiracy-of-friends-2012-1202894948_{width}x.jpg?v=1762292607)
![O'shaughnessy, Kathy FICTION PAPERBACK Kathy O'Shaughnessy: In Love with George Eliot [2020]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/o-shaughnessy-kathy-kathy-o-shaughnessy-in-love-with-george-eliot-2020-1202894951_{width}x.jpg?v=1762292591)
![Evans, Lissa FICTION PAPERBACK Lissa Evans: Their Finest Hour and a Half [2010]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/evans-lissa-lissa-evans-their-finest-hour-and-a-half-2010-1202894954_{width}x.jpg?v=1762292595)
![Thirkell, Angela & Mccall Smith, Alexander FICTION PAPERBACK Angela Thirkell: Wild Strawberries [2012]](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/thirkell-angela-mccall-smith-alexander-angela-thirkell-wild-strawberries-2012-1202894946_{width}x.jpg?v=1762292597)
![Walker, Fiona FICTION PAPERBACK Fiona Walker: Four Play [2007] paperback](http://chaptersbookstore.com/cdn/shop/files/walker-fiona-fiona-walker-four-play-2007-paperback-1202185760_{width}x.jpg?v=1762203794)