This beautifully written first novel is about the kind of love that can never be blotted out... a tender, heartbreaking story about choices made and secrets kept too long

A delicate and unusual endeavour to write about ordinary people in a way that is so realistic that it almost reads like memoir. The passages evoking Katherine's children are outstanding. The meditations on maternal and marital love verge on the profound. And the ending will bring a lump to your throat.

Michele Forbes' startlingly assured debut has already won praise from those giants of Irish literature John Banville, Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle, and rightly so... Lyrical and at times almost unbearably tender (the final scenes between Katherine and George will break your heart), Forbes delicately captures the echoes of history that pierce the present

This moving story is beautifully written, with powerful imagery and prose that becomes quite mesmerising at times. An astonishingly accomplished debut by actress-turned-author Forbes, this haunting novel will linger in your mind

I was thoroughly caught up in this beautifully written debut novel. Set in Northern Ireland, in 1949 Katherine must choose between George Bedford and Tom McKinley. What happened that summer will haunt Katherine and George 20 years later, when they try to save their marriage.