Book description
This overwhelmingly hot summer everything seems to be slowing down in
the tiny Devon village where Alison lives, as if the sun is pouring hot
glue over it. â  This idn't nothin',' says Alison's grandmother,
recalling a drought when the earth swallowed lambs, and the summer after
the war when people got electric shocks off each other. But Alison knows
her grandmother's memory is lying: this is far worse. She feels that
time has stopped just as she wants to enter the real world of adulthood.
In fact, in the cruel heat of summer, time is creeping towards her, and
closing in around the valley. â  A remarkable first novel, which
renders domestic detail fascinating and makes it quite possible to
believe in magic'
Tim Pears is the author of Wake Up
(Bloomsbury, 2002), In a Land of Plenty (adapted into a major
BBC TV series in 2001) and A Revolution of the Sun. He lives
in Oxford with his wife and children.
