The Lodge

The Lodge is a glass-fronted house on the edge of a cliff, expensive and surrounded by snow. The Wilson family have booked it for a holiday. On paper the plan is generous. In practice it puts Danni, the new wife, and Fiona, the ex-wife, in the same house for a week, along with the children and every grievance the adults brought with them.

The book is a domestic suspense novel, and for a while it lets the situation carry the tension. Small contests over territory pass between the two women. Remarks land in front of the children. Each woman has been handed her own version of events about the other, and neither version is neutral.

Then the snow comes down in earnest and the road is lost. The family is cut off in a house built mostly of glass, with no place to walk off to and no way of keeping a private quarrel private.

The early pages are slow and watchful, built on awkward conversations rather than action. The pressure rises as the weather closes in, and the question is what a week of forced closeness does to two women who have been told to distrust each other.