The Given World

About the book

'Wonderful ... an Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century' AMY LIPTROT
'Reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives' EVIE WYLD
'Extraordinary ... The best serious fiction I've read this year' FRANCIS SPUFFORD
'Attuned, loving and thoughtful ... I loved its warmth and intricacy' SARAH MOSS
'Nobody does nature better than Melissa Harrison' TRISTAN GOOLEY

A FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026

April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change.

In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.

A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a doctor realises, too late, that he has long underestimated his wife; across the village, people are plagued by the same vast and unsettling dream. And alone in a converted priory, overlooking watermeadows unchanged for centuries, Clare Grey receives news which will force her to reconsider her family’s past and the fresh weight of her solitary existence.