Anticipation

This rich and darkly funny novel is about family history and the risk and power of knowledge. I want to tell you a story about my mother, although of course it is also mine inherited, along with dangly earlobes and a horror of deep water. Janine s mother had an obsession: her ancestry. But what she uncovered was a colourful assortment of characters and their penchant for cruelty and abuse. When her mother dies, Janine continues the genealogical search. She buys a run-down house on a tiny island, where she sits and writes up the stories of her forebears, worrying whether the damaging genes have been passed on. Meanwhile the builder, Jake, is erecting a jetty for her, and it is his presence, along with Janine s discovery about her grandfather, that might offer her hope of redemption. Startlingly original and superbly written, Tanya Moir s surprising new book asks how much we really want to know about our futures and our pasts.