The Stopped Heart

A violent storm breaks over a small farming cottage, and a red-haired stranger turns up in the garden. Eliza and her parents bring him inside. Before long it is plain that he has no plan to go.

A century later, Mary and Graham have lived through the worst thing that can happen to parents. They have left behind the memories and the newspaper headlines and bought a cottage with a beautiful garden in rural Suffolk, hoping the place will let them forget and start again.

The novel runs between two eras, linking the household of Eliza's family with the couple who later settle in the same kind of house and land. The two threads share a setting, and the past does not stay in the past.

The book deals with grief, sexual desire, love and real malevolence. It is a dark and unsettling read in a rural setting, where a quiet domestic scene gives way to menace as the stranger's hold on the family tightens.