by Graham Swift
First published 2008
Tom Crick teaches history in the waterlogged Fen Country of East Anglia, but the past refuses to stay buried. As he faces the end of his career, Tom tells his students stories that weave together his own life with centuries of family history. His tales stretch back 240 years through generations of his ancestors, revealing secrets about eel fishing, brewing ale, and the madness that seems to run in bloodlines. The narrative moves between Tom's troubled marriage and the sins of his forebears, uncovering incidents of incest and violence that echo through time. Tom's wife Mary haunts the edges of his story, her own breakdown connected to the family's cursed legacy. In this bleak landscape of marshes and waterways, Tom discovers that personal history and the broader sweep of time intersect in ways both terrible and inevitable. The weight of the past presses down on the present, forcing Tom to confront truths about his family that rival the darkest Greek tragedies.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama, academic
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: East Anglia, Fen Country
Period: 240 Years
354 pages · Paperback · Picador USA
Content warnings: mental-illness