Bad relations

A TALE OF A TRAGEDY SEEPING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND A FAMILY FRACTURED BY HISTORY AND DESIRE'Bad Relations is an amazing achievement and one of the most satisfying books you're likely to read this year' The Times'Haunting and beautiful...

In recent British fiction I can think only of Tessa Hadley who rivals Connolly in exacting such intricate, compelling drama from close-knit families...

I don't often wish a book were longer, but this one I did' ObserverOn the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother.

William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning. 'The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head.

A wonderful novel' Nina Stibbe'This is an Atonement-like novel about the messy stuff that is family life' Spectator'A compelling family saga' Sunday Times