Cheri's Reviews > Unsettled Ground

4.5 Stars

’The morning sky lightens, and snow falls on the cottage. It falls on the thatch, concealing the moss and the mouse damage, smoothing out the undulations, filling in the hollows and slips melting where it touches the bricks of the chimney. It settles on the plants and bare soil in the front garden and forms a perfect mound on top of the rotten gatepost, as though shaped from the inside of a teacup.’

There’s a brief moment when Fuller seduces, lulls you into envisioning this lovely, bucolic setting. The family inside this little cottage includes Dot, a seventy year-old woman, her adult twins, Julius and Jeanie, and Jeanie’s beloved dog Maude. The serenity of the scene serves as a diversion, if only momentary, from the loss that will befall them soon. Dot sees, senses it coming, both a premonition and a physical acceptance of what will transpire, reaching out to comfort, she strokes Maude’s head.

This is a melancholy story, shared with lovely, if subdued, prose that flows effortlessly. A story in which way leads on to way, with each twist in their paths leading them further into darkness even as they seek for evidence of light, and a way back. But to what? The life they’d been living before is irreparably changed, and yet there is still life, and secrets which will be revealed.


Pub Date: 18 May 2021


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Tin House

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