The Unwilding

Description of book

A stunning new novel about power, family and things unsaid, from the acclaimed author of Nightingale, Marina Kemp.

When fledgling writer Zoe arrives at the Sicilian holiday house of famed novelist Don Travers, she feels that she has made it. And yet as the week unfolds it is not Don but his children and unknowable wife, Lydia, who come to intrigue Zoe most.

On the fringes, Don’s youngest, Nemony, watches as her older siblings begin to navigate the treacherous waters of the adult world. When her adored oldest sister makes a terrible mistake, the holiday ends suddenly, exposing the fissures in their parents’ marriage and leaving her to confront the fallibility of the siblings she so reveres.

Years later the events of that summer continue to haunt. As Nemony, now a new mother herself, strikes up an unusual friendship with Zoe, she finds solace – but it is soon threatened when she is forced to question the depth of Zoe’s fascination with her family.

Tracing their lives through Sicily, London and the old mining towns of Appalachia, Nemony must uncover the stories that have gone untold and things unsaid – about her implacable father, her troubled mother, and the siblings she might still do anything for.