Sleep

‘Beautiful … Incredibly moving’ ANN PATCHETT

‘Sun-saturated prose’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘A rich tale you can’t put down’ iNEWS

‘Deeply satisfying … beautifully written’ POLLY SAMSON

A family secret. A new love. The chance to start again.

Margaret's childhood is one of Saturday morning pancakes and sunlit swimming pools behind white picket fences. Then, one fateful summer, everything changes. A line is crossed and the simple pleasures of girlhood slip away.

Twenty-five years later, Margaret is newly divorced with two young daughters of her own. She's starting over while discovering the pleasures of a new boyfriend. But, returning to the family home at her mother's beckoning, she finds herself swept up in the unspoken truth of that long ago summer. She must now reckon with what binds the past to the present, one generation to the next, and safety to the freedom we most desire.

A must-read novel of the summer in Sunday Times Style, Elle and Good Housekeeping.

‘A moving, funny and searing look at family and marriage. I adored it’ CHRIS WHITAKER, author of All the Colours of the Dark

‘Shattering, but also witty, arch, probing and hopeful’ PANDORA SYKES, in Sunday Times Style

‘Jones takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Virginia Woolf’ NEW YORK TIMES

'Thrillingly virtuosic – beguiling, unsettling and stylish’ JESSICA STANLEY, author of Consider Yourself Kissed

‘A novel of quiet, devastating beauty …I loved it' ABIGAIL DEAN, author of Girl A

© 2025 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008722920

Release date

Audiobook: 22 May 2025