Books

‘The home scar – that’s what they call the mark limpets make on the rock when they return.’ ”Wait, they leave the rock?” ‘Of course. How else would they survive?’

On opposite sides of the world, half-siblings Cassie and Christo have built their lives around work, intent on ignoring their painful past. When a dramatic storm in Galway hits the headlines, they’re drawn back there to revisit a glorious childhood summer, the last before their mother died.

But their journey uncovers memories of a far less happy summer – one that had tragic consequences. Confronted with the havoc their mother left in her wake, Cassie and Christo are forced to face their past and – ready or not – to deal with the messy tangle of parental love and neglect that shaped them. The Home Scar is a luminous and precise story about the inheritance of loss and the possibility of finally making peace with it.

He handed the easel to the boatman, reaching down the pier wall towards the sea. Mr Lloyd has decided to travel to the island by boat without engine – the authentic experience. Unbeknownst to him, Mr Masson will also soon be arriving for the summer.

Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place – one in his paintings, the other by capturing its speech, the language he hopes to preserve. But the people who live on this rock – three miles long and half-a-mile wide – have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return. Soft summer days pass, and the islanders are forced to question what they value and what they desire.

As the autumn beckons, and the visitors head home, there will be a reckoning.