Groundwater

(Hardback)

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By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence

Groundwater masterfully and subtly begins to re-enchant all that we have reduced Amber Husain
'A masterful portrait of the fractious, shimmering webs underneath our not-so ordinary lives' Sophie Mackintosh
'This is a novel that gets right under your skin' Ella Frears


John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Lizs sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.

Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.

As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden and the summer builds to its harrowing climax.

Taut and menacing, full of disquiet and tenderness, Groundwater is about the gulfs that lies between us and those we love and the miraculous ways our deepest desires and fears manifest.

Reviews

A ruthless and minutely observed reckoning with the stories, beliefs, and places we make to shelter from fear of death -- AMBER HUSAIN
As uncanny and fretful as a nightmare, Groundwater is nonetheless rooted in a totally real place and is populated with a cast of completely convincing characters. The Hell which is other people is meticulously painted here with humour, imagination and genuine poignancy -- AIDAN COTTRELL BOYCE
Groundwater is an exquisite study of characters bound together by domestic life, compelled by both intimacy and discord, as their interactions gradually expose a deeply rooted desire for the feral -- CHRISTIANA SPENS
Uncanny and unsettling, Groundwater is a masterful portrait of the fractious, shimmering webs underneath our not-so ordinary lives. Throughout the novel menace and beauty knock up against each other, both revealing just how much there is at stake -- SOPHIE MACKINTOSH
So dreamlike and yet so tense a heady combination beautifully balanced by McMullan. This is a novel that gets right under your skin -- ELLA FREARS
Groundwater subtly plucks at the invisible strings that connect one person to another - the familial, the romantic, those of friendship, of dependency. It explores the gulf that can form between ourselves and the ones we love, how we can make sense of it, how we can cross it. -- VANESSA ONWUEMEZI
Praise for The Last Good Man: A Scarlet Letter for our times -- MARGARET ATWOOD
Recalling the smack-in-the-face technique of early Ian McEwan Viciously captivating: frightening to be around, impossible to put aside * GUARDIAN *
A visceral and disquieting debut novel about the power of words * NEW STATESMAN *
McMullan makes highly effective use of the rugged landscape, full of unease and portents, in his creepily unsettling debut, a timely tale about the dangers of toxic rhetoric and mob rule * DAILY MAIL *
A brilliantly unsettling parable about how we police our societies through violence, language and shame * INDEPENDENT.CO.UK *

Author Bio

Thomas McMullan lives and works in London. His debut novel, The Last Good Man, won the 2021 Betty Trask Prize. His short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, The Dublin Review, Granta, 3:AM Magazine, Lighthouse and Best British Short Stories, and his journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, frieze, ArtReview and BBC News.