'Gorgeous and heightened and fully of glittering icy people' TIMES

'I loved this smart and subtle exploration of modern motherhood and womanhood' Daisy Buchanan

'How can anyone leave someone they love?'

Martin Berg is falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer, his girlfriend was the wildly intelligent Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the hellraising artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript is now languishing in a drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has vanished – leaving him to raise their children alone.

Cecilia: an eccentric wife and absent mother, a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Rakel stumbles across a clue as to why her mother left, she sets out to fill the gaps in her family's story and discovers that some questions have no clear answers…

__________

PRAISE FOR COLLECTED WORKS:

'Utterly gripping… a magnificent doorstop of a novel' Guardian

'An assured, bittersweet novel that, like youth, seems to have it all' Financial Times

'Blends the thrill of a mystery with the curiosity and depth of philosophical enquiry' New Yorker

'Eminently readable and engrossing' Spectator

'A real knickerbocker glory of a novel… manages to out-Franzen Jonathan Franzen and is addictive as any box-set' The Crack Magazine

'Thrilling, brilliant and immense in the best possible way' Francesca Reece

'The most convincing work of literary fiction I've read in years… vibrating with intelligence and style' Emily Temple