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An Observer Best Debut of the Year

A Granta Best Young British Novelist

‘I loved this book’ JULIA ARMFIELD

‘Exhilarating’ MONICA HEISEY

‘Astonishing’ ANDREA LAWLOR

‘Should be on everyone’s summer reading list’
iNEWS

‘Scorching … One of our favourite reads’
TIME OUT

A Guardian Essential Summer Read

A sensual debut novel of the forbidden love between a young woman and a headmaster’s wife, unfolding across a single a heatwave summer.

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’. There she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.

Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into the older woman’s world with their unspoken desire blooming into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both know that a choice must finally be made.

‘Desire crackles through these pages like fire’
TELEGRAPH

‘Wildly sexy … I kept forgetting to exhale’ CHARLOTTE MENDELSON

‘There’s nothing else like it out there’
THE TIMES

‘Compulsively readable … beautiful, brilliant’
OBSERVER

‘Moody, generous and brilliant’ JESSIE BURTON

‘Rare and thrilling’ SARAH WINMAN

Publisher Review

‘The intense physicality of the novel’s emotions and its stylish, stripped-back prose make for an arresting pairing’ Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

‘Atmospheric and daring’
Guardian

‘There’s nothing else like it out there’
The Times

‘Bold and beautiful… Desire crackles through these pages like fire’ Telegraph

‘Entirely captivating… Patrick’s staccato sentences… [become] a secondary language for butchness, powerful and confident’ Kristen Arnett, New York Times

‘[A] subtle, scintillating novel’ TLS

‘Brilliant and sexy… It should be on everyone’s summer reading list’
iNews

‘A highly charged tale of desire and obsession’ Marie Claire

‘A tense, often funny tale of lust and longing… A moving yet non-maudlin reflection on the complexity of gender’ Literary Review

‘Embraces and then toys with our expectation of the lesbian romance… Spare and direct’ London Review of Books

‘Bold, uncompromising… Remarkable’
Daily Express

‘So seductively and intelligently observed that its pulse continues long after the final page’ Sarah Winman, author of Still Life

‘A languorous slow-burn and a moving reflection on queerness and what it is to be and be seen’ Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea

‘Moody, generous and brilliant’ Jessie Burton, author of The House of Fortune

‘Tense, taut and exhilarating’ Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually

‘Crisp and beautiful’ Amy Key, author of Arrangements in Blue

‘Hot!’ Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo

‘Astonishing’ Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

‘Beautifully crafted and uncannily accomplished’ Rupert Thomson, author of Never Anyone but You

‘Taut with anticipation’ Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service