Description
Book SynopsisHal Treherne is a soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other commitment in life is to his beloved wife, Clara, and when Hal is transferred to Cyprus she and their twin daughters join him. But the island is in the heat of the emergency; the British are defending the colony against Cypriots - schoolboys and armed guerillas alike - battling for union with Greece.
Clara shares Hal''s sense of duty and honour; she knows she must settle down, make the best of things, smile. But action changes Hal, and the atrocities he is drawn into take him not only further from Clara but himself, too; a betrayal that is only the first step down a dark path.
Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Trade ReviewJones is fabulous at this, offering titbits of danger and discord while keeping a cool, matter of fact tone for the big horrors... This is, at heart, a moving love story * Sunday Times *
Jones's first novel,
The Outcast, winner if the Costa First Novel Award, was a very hard act to follow. Her second, however, is even better... Jones's research is impeccable, and her emotional intelligence outstanding -- Kate Saunders * The Times *
In this exciting novel that resonates with contemporary parallels, Jones is unusual among women writers in focusing as much on the thrills and terrors of frontline action as its psychological fall out...it's a movie waiting to happen -- Emma Hagestadt * Independent *
Ambitious...uncannily good at the evocation of charged moments * Guardian *
Here Jones's talent really shows... In an excellent encounter with a military psychiatrist, the dialogue breaks like dry twigs -- Stephanie Cross * Times Literary Supplement *
