Idle Grounds

(Hardback)

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The riveting debut novel 'Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, this novel is an absolute one-off. I loved it' CLAIRE FULLER 'Every sentence positively bristles with unease. One of the most atmospheric novels I have read in a long time. Beautifully written' JENNIE GODFREY 'An acid trip of a novel. Weird, sinister and darkly funny' AMY TWIGG As always with these things it started with a birthday party. On a bright summer day in 1989 New England, Abi, three years old, vanishes from her aunt's secluded home. Upstairs, her young cousins are looking out of the window. Something is unfolding in the distance at the edge of the forest - something sinister that is watching them back. The adults don't seem to notice that the youngest of the group has disappeared. Too busy bickering over politics and reminiscing about the family's domineering late matriarch, Beezy, they leave the children with no choice but to get Abi back themselves. As the cousins embark on a quest through their grandmother's sprawling estate, buried family secrets come to light and long-awaited plans are set in motion. Will they lose themselves while trying to find her Idle Grounds is a chilling, evocative and darkly comic debut about childhood, legacy, and the burdens and privileges we carry with us. 'Deviously subtle and intoxicatingly sinister, Idle Grounds conjures up a new language of nightmare symbolism to fill the reader's heart with dread. A deservedly assured debut!' LEON CRAIG 'Astonishing . . . IDLE GROUNDS left me like a kid with a dreadful yet delicious secret who tells everyone, I know something you don't know!-but I can't tell; you'll have to find out for yourself' RACHEL LYON

Reviews

Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, this novel is an absolute one-off. I loved it -- Claire Fuller
Every sentence positively bristles with unease. One of the most atmospheric novels I have read in a long time. Beautifully written -- Jennie Godfrey
An acid trip of a novel. Weird, sinister and darkly funny. I can't wait to see what Bamford does next -- Amy Twigg
Deviously subtle and intoxicatingly sinister, Idle Grounds conjures up a new language of nightmare symbolism to fill the reader's heart with dread. A deservedly assured debut! -- Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells
To read Krystelle Bamfords astonishing debut is to be perpetually conflicted, like the child cousins it follows, between tearing at breakneck speed through the forest of its gorgeous pages to find out what will happen next, and deliberating with delirious languor, stopping to pick up, turn over, and marvel at each wryly glorious description, each exquisite joke. IDLE GROUNDS left me like a kid with a dreadful yet delicious secret who tells everyone, I know something you dont know!but I cant tell; youll have to find out for yourself -- Rachel Lyon, author of Self-Portrait with Boy and Fruit of the Dead

Author Bio

Krystelle Bamford's work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, bath magg, PANK, Under the Radar and a number of anthologies including the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 (Eyewear). She is a 2019 Primers (Nine Arches Press) poet and was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Born in France and raised in a haunted little corner of Massachusetts, she now lives with her partner and two kids in Edinburgh. Idle Grounds is her debut novel.