Trouble Was 9781526698605 Hardback

‘I’ve read no better novel in years’Samantha HarveyA transporting piece of 1970s gothic with a viscous sensory pullThe Times’Evocative, resonant, and quite simply, brilliant’Claire FullerLike the building of a thunderstorm through a sultry day the novels engines thrum from the first pageSarah Moss,Guardian’Disturbing and heartbreaking in equal measureHari KunzruTo view the world through the lens of Frank Dart is a moving and captivating experienceIrish TimesA powerfully evocative and tenderly realised debut novel about family secrets, the power of imagination – and coming of age in the dying dreams of the 1970s1976. Nine-year-old Frank Dart dreams of his absent dad, away at sea; while making sure his mums got all the cigarettes she needs for the long drive in their battered Citron down to their new home in North Devon.Here in Aunt Perrys house, Frank and his little sister Odette must make sense of their cousins hostility while their mum seems to drift further and further away. The house is haunted by secrets, past and present; and as spring turns to a suffocatingly hot summer, the past threatens to boil over and scald everything in its wake.Trouble Wasis a raw and tender story of growing up too soon, betrayal and resilience, love and survival and a dazzling exploration of toxic family politics, buried secrets and the power of the imagination.