First published 2013
Jean Lux lives behind a facade that barely conceals her family's dysfunction. An academic's wife and mother carrying deep guilt, she yearns for something to break the monotony of her constrained existence. Her elder daughter Eve wallows in bitter jealousy toward her sister, nursing a hatred so intense it approaches murderous territory. The family's precarious balance shifts when Raymond Snow appears. Snow harbors old rivalries with Jean's husband but turns his attention to the emotionally fragile Eve. As these dangerous attractions develop, Jean's closest friend Helena struggles with a secret confession that could reshape everyone's future. The Lux household becomes a pressure cooker of suppressed emotions and toxic relationships. Each family member guards their own resentments while circling around truths too painful to voice. What begins as ordinary domestic tension escalates into something far more threatening as hidden desires surface and old wounds reopen.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Jerusalem
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
308 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness